Lovers, Slayers And Witches
by Rebecca Ashling
Summary: Season 5 in an alternate Buffyverse. Buffy/Willow/Tara triad.
1. CHAPTER ONE: BUFFY

**CHAPTER ONE: **_**BUFFY**_

**DISCLAIMER:** "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" are owned by Joss Whedon and his corporate affiliates. I own neither of these properties and I am writing this story for fun, not profit.

**A/N:** _This story begins about a week before Tara's 20th birthday. Dawn is Buffy's fraternal twin. Willow has known she is a lesbian since adolescence._

**:Tuesday, 10th October 2000:**

We're lying on the bed we've just made, Faith and I, she on her right side, me on my left, facing one another. Faith looks sad and desolate. The zest in her dark amber gaze has turned to ash.

"What's up, Faithy?" I ask her.

She glances at the pool of blood between us. "It hurts, B." she says in her husky voice. "It hurts real bad. Please take it out. Please... please forgive me, Buffy."

I see the wound in her belly that I made with her own knife. It oozes red corruption. I can't bear the sight of her pain or the weight of her tears. I slide the weapon from out of her flesh. The wound disappears, replaced by a scar. A sunburst of dimples illuminates her features, golden flecks of mischief dance in her eyes. She brings her head toward mine and I lean forward to meet her kiss. The taste of chocolate and honey fills my lungs. My heart beats so fast it's almost painful. We embrace, make love. I feel the warmth of her soft skin, slicked with sweat and our combined essences. Hands and tongues play rhapsodies of joy on the other's body as we breathe hard to our climax. When we are spent, Faith's expression turns sorrowful again. But there's no despair there now.

"I gotta go, B." She caresses my cheek tenderly. "Tell Willow I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I shouldn't have hurt her or you, your mom, Angel... I love you, Buffy."

And then Faith is gone. "I love you." I whisper and awake weeping to the urgent ringing of the phone. I answer it.

"I'm sorry to call you at such an early hour, Buffy, but I have-"

"I know, Giles." I interrupt him. "Faith is dead."

**To be continued...**


	2. CHAPTER TWO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWO: WILLOW**

**A/N:** A big thanks to wiffyscoob for her help.

:**_Tuesday, 10th October 2000_**:

I stomp into the training room at The Magic Box in the foulest of moods. I am beyond cranky, beyond pissed, beyond the limits of my vocabulary. And it's a darn big vocabulary. Also, I'm kind of worried.

"GILES!" I yell, transfixing him with my most resolute scowl.

Giles is flustered, makes a series of vowel sounds and stuttered consonants as he tries to find words. Buffy is quicker to recover of course.

"What ya do to your hand, Will?" she asks.

I give her a baleful glance. Last week, she did the whacky, accusing me of hurting her mom. There was an apology, there was chocolate, and there was ice-cream. But Buffy DIDN'T explain why. Screw her, even if there were mochas, too.

"That spell, Dawnie asked you to do?" I say to Giles. "The one to see if someone's a demon?" Can you believe it? Dawn found out that Tara's dad and brother told her she'd grow up to be a demon. My gentle Tara, a demon! Poopheads!

"Er, yes. What about it, Willow?" he asks me in a cautious tone.

I hold up my injured southpaw, waving it in front of them. Severe bruising, a wrist sprain and a dislocated pinkie. Ouch! "Tara did this!" Now this is why I'm scared. Did Giles and Dawn screw up?

"My God!" Buffy begins to tool up for Slayer mode. "Tara really is a demon!"

"Stay where you are, Buffy Anne Summers!" I order her sternly. If looks could maim, I'd have me a bottle-blonde wig and a nifty Buffy bodysuit. "No slaying my girlfriend without permission, missy!"

"That spell is a very reliable one. It's been taught to Watchers for generations. "There is concern in Giles' face. "Perhaps you could tell us exactly what happened, Willow?"

So I tell them about this morning.


	3. CHAPTER THREE: TARA

**CHAPTER THREE: TARA**

:**_Tuesday, 10th October 2000_**:

It's now after sundown in Sunnydale. I have no money and I'm barefoot in my jammies. I feel miserable and empty. I've hurt Willow. While thinking over the events of this morning I debate whether to turn myself over to Buffy for slayage or jump in front of a car. It had seemed such a promising day...

At about six I awoke from fretful sleep. Willow was at her laptop overnighting on a chem paper. She can really be twee to the point of annoyance and I hadn't appreciated having my breasts referred to as "cute little cuddlebumps". Hence her midnight oiliness. My busy little bumblebee with her quirky, no make that insane, colour coded course notes. I grinned at my pretty, red vixen. "Morning, sweetie."

Willow came over to the bed and clasped my hand, kissed me. "Hey, baby. Forgiven me?" Her hazel eyes sparkled with lustful speculation.

I squeezed her hand. Willow screamed. Her little finger was oddly askew. Horrorstruck, I went to call the paramedics. The phone splintered in my hand. I was astonished and dismayed. A panicked realisation came to me. I'd harmed Willow and I really was what my father told me I was. I fled.

About four months earlier, I remember that soon after Willow and I had become an item, Buffy had taken me aside. She had stared at me for a long, discomfitting moment with hard, agate eyes. Always intimidated by her, I had felt afraid. I'm not good with the whole violence thing. Then she'd begun to tell me about Willow and Faith.

Willow had been in her senior year at Sunnydale High. She had a crush on Faith, the other Slayer. One night, Faith had wanted Willow, had taken Willow, had had Willow. Then, after Faith had gotten some, she'd made Willow get gone, pushing her out of the door, naked and clutching her clothes. Leaving her in the dark in some sleazy motel.

Focusing the full intensity of the Summers Death Glare on me, an expression I'd grown to know while dating Dawn, Buffy had said with cold, precise clarity:

"If you harm Willow, I will batter you unconscious with a shovel and then bury you alive."

I'd almost bolted. "I'll never deliberately cause Willow pain." I'd told her.

"That's not good enough." she replied.

"Dawn never meant to break my heart." I'd countered. "But when Oz came back, she chose him over me. These things happen."

Buffy had sighed with concession. "You've got a point." And that had ended the discussion.

So what am I to do? I decide to get it over and let Buffy kill me. I think I can trust her not to play with me. Then I hear a growl from behind me.


	4. CHAPTER FOUR: BUFFY

**CHAPTER FOUR: BUFFY**

**A/N:** A plot element from the Season Eight comics is introduced here.

:**_Tuesday, 10th October 2000_**:

I'm in love with darkness. That's why I broke up with Riley after all the stuff with Dracula. Don't get me wrong, Riley's a good man, a brave man. As Xander's said, he's dangling steel. There was lust, affection, caring. But he never called to what's deep inside me. The people I've felt, feel, true passion for, have shadows braided into the threads of light which are their souls: Angel, Faith...Willow. Sometimes she's callous and strange. Hey, she said it, not me. Oh, Willow!

Is Willow real? I have my memories of her, all the Christmas and birthday presents she gave me. There are photos, school transcripts and year books. She has a closet with a really bad wardrobe. She's corroborated to the max. But after I cast that trancy spell Anya told me about and later found that dying woman, nun?... Willow's something called The Seed, is both The Door and The Source, made flesh, for the Slayers to protect. Cryptic, much? Then there was that little girl who wasn't a little girl. Slayers, plural. I thought it meant Faith but she finally died of her coma. Who was called in her place?

Now I'm hunting for Tara. She gained my respect when she stood up to my bullying. She was so obviously frightened of me that I felt ashamed. But she wouldn't give Will up and even argued back. She's the only one of Willow's suitors I haven't scared off.

I hear a woman scream and ice squirms in the pit of my stomach. Vampire. I sprint toward the cry and pounce on the vampire like a lion with a zebra, worrying it with quips and blows. I slip in the muck of the alley and the vamp gets my stake from me. I'm badly positioned and the monster's pus-yellow eyes flare with delight as he aims the sharp wood at my heart with demonic speed. No way can I dodge this. A hand seizes his wrist, twists and breaks it. The beast snarls in agony. Then there's that hissy, screamy sound and he's charnel dust. I look into the turquoise eyes of my rescuer and know her for what she is. It's Tara. She is Faith's heir. She is the Slayer.


	5. CHAPTER FIVE: WILLOW

**CHAPTER FIVE: WILLOW**

:**_Tuesday, 10th October 2000_**:

Anya puts some water and a couple of antacids in front of me. "This is for your acidy stomach. There will be no charge as Tara is not only one of my best customers but also my friend. I worry too." She pats my shoulder. I'm touched and surprised by the concern in her brown eyes and give her a grateful smile. One day, I might come to like Anya, but I don't think I'll ever grok her. Why are Tuesdays so fraught? Dawn says it's because the day is associated with Mars. So war, fire and all things troubly and strifey.

Xander and Oz have been dispatched on a munchies mission. Giles and Dawn are having a magicky research party for two. The mojo is so not my thing. Tara says I have great potential as a witch. But given all the dumb things Dawn has done with magic over the years, especially that My-Will-Be-Done spell which nearly resulted in a marriage between Anya and me? Really sorta put off. Reckon I'll stay Laptop-Geek Willow and leave the broomstick action to Tara and Dawn. I blush as an unbidden image comes to mind. That wasn't quite what I meant, I scold my errant brain. Naughty synapses!

The bell rings as Buffy and Tara enter the shop. Tara's still in her night things and wearing Buffy's jacket. "Tara!" I exclaim as I engulf her with a hug.

Tara stiffens and awkwardly cuddles me. Carefully, like I'm made of glass. "I'm s-sorry, Willow." she sobs.

Buffy grips Tara's arm. "Hey. Not your fault. I was clumsy at first, too."

I catch on before everyone else does. Well, I am GPA 4.0 girl. "Tara's a Slayer?" I'm aghast.

"Didn't Giles tell you guys? Faith died early today." Buffy points at Tara. "This woman is The One Girl In All The World. She dusted her first vamp and saved me from utter humiliation." She beams proudly.

"Good Lord!" ejaculates Giles. Then, "Utter humiliation?"

"Yep. Was nearly kebabed with my own stake."

Tara huddles into herself, veiling her face with her hair. This will not bode well.


	6. CHAPTER SIX: TARA

**CHAPTER SIX: TARA**

:_**Tuesday, 10th October 2000**_:

My father seldom fed the dogs on our farm. "Keep 'em lean, keep 'em keen." he would say. I now know how those mutts felt. I've never been so ravenous, tearing into slices of pizza like a shoal of piranha fish.

"Is this appetite of mine a Slayer thing?" I ask curiously.

"Adrenaline reaction?" offers Oz. He's seated next to Dawn with his arm around her. Dawn's blue eyes are peering intently at me.

Buffy nods in agreement. "You survive danger, your body wants to party. Food, dancing, sex, whatever. It's more intense for Slayers, though."

"So everyone gets the hungries and hornies, huh?" jokes Xander. Buffy winces.

"Not just the body, Xander." I tell him. "The mind and spirit too." Dawn's regard is making me edgy. "What?" I snap at her.

She doesn't answer me but turns to Giles instead. "What happens if a witch is called? Never heard of a Slayer-witch, before." Dawn sounds anxious.

"Oh, dear God!" Giles exclaims as he obviously recalls some disquieting fact. "I should have realized..." he trails off.

"Realized what exactly?" Willow has caught Dawn's unease.

"Yes, tell me." I demand of him. What other crappy thing do I have to deal with?"

"Your aura's changed." says Dawn. "It's like Buffy's now."

That wasn't very illuminating. I arch an eyebrow at Giles.

"Slayers and witches both need to have magical potential." he's polishing his glasses so he doesn't have to see my expression. "Witches have been called in the past and while they don't lose their magic, it does transform."

I feel numb. "My witchiness came from my mom. I don't have it any more? My power's turned from a beautiful butterfly into a very hungry caterpillar?"

"Oh, baby." mourns Willow.

Giles is silent. What else is there to say?

"It's my fault." says a crestfallen Buffy. "If I hadn't put Faith in that coma..."

"Actually, Little Sis, I'm to blame." Dawn's tone is sardonic. "If I'd strangled you with your umbilical cord before we were born, none of this would have happened."

There's a shocked silence. Then Buffy makes a wry smile, laughs ruefully. Everyone's uncomfortable. Then Spike comes into the shop. A welcome distraction. He nods at Buffy and Dawn. "Danny, Arnold."

Buffy and Dawn both bristle in unison. They're both sensitive about their height. Especially when people can see them together. So very much the wrong thing for Spike to say. I'm feeling agitated. I want to-

"Hey, Tare." says Buffy with a smirk. She flicks a malicious glance at Spike. "You look a little restless. Wanna work out some aggro? On our very own vampire training dummy?"

"Oy!" protests Spike.

"Tara's a Slayer now." Buffy tells him. "She'll need a lotta practice, intensive practice."

"Oh, bloody Hell!"


	7. CHAPTER SEVEN: BUFFY

**CHAPTER SEVEN: BUFFY**

:**_Wednesday, 11th October 2000_**:

Last night, Tara didn't take up my kind offer to beat Spike into pulpy oblivion. She said she had something else in mind to help take the edge off. It's a nice morning. There's actually some breeze and it's pleasantly cooler. I'm to meet Willow at UC Sunnydale. I'm in a good mood. But it's a veneer, I'm still grieving for Faith. I see my favouritest redhead and wave at her.

"Hey, Will. You look well." I say brightly.

Willow's eyelids are half-closed and puffy. It's either a mondo lack of sleep or a truly fricking awful hangover. Willow grimaces horribly. "Are all Slayers such mystical energizer bunnies?"

"Sorry, coppertop. Just feeling happy."

"Firstly, Buffy, don't ever call me that again. Secondly, I know I look like a goddam zombie."

"Moving swiftly on, where's Tare?" I ask her.

"Tara's checking in with Giles. He wants to see you and me after classes." Willow frowns.

I look sadly at Will. She looks so worn. "Perhaps, you should have taken the day off."

"What! Miss classes?" she splutters with indignation. "The very idea is...I think you're overestimating the severity of my near-death state of utter exhaustion here, Buff." Her bleariness suddenly clears. She jabs an indicting digit into my chest. "You've known Tara for several months now and you start giving her, my girlfriend, cutesy pet names. What's that about, huh?"

"Hamnoo?" I didn't order this conversation. My frail good cheer is rapidly fracturing into jagged fragments of chagrin.

Willow looks searchingly at my face. "You're as unhappy about Tara being called as a Slayer as I am." she states. Then: "Was jealousy girl just then. Sorry."

"I don't want to take Tara from you, Will. It's just...I'm so lonely being the only one. And I do worry about Tara being my paddywhack."

"Padawan." Will corrects me. "And Faith went all Darth Vader on you."

"Well, Obi-Wan did OK with Luke." I reassure her.

"Yeah, Buffy. Because Obi-Wan died before he could botch his training too." she retorts.

It's like a hard punch in the heart. Her now tangible distrust wounds me. I grip Willow's uninjured wrist. She gasps in pain. "I will NOT fail Tara like I did Faith!" I say vehemently. "I can't, I won't!" I release her. There are my fingermarks showing vividly on her pale skin.

"I'm not sure I can believe you, Buffy. See you later." She gives me a cold gaze. And Willow walks away.


	8. CHAPTER EIGHT: WILLOW

**CHAPTER EIGHT: WILLOW**

**A/N:** Some dialogue is taken from the episode "Doppelgangland" by Joss Whedon. A quote from the Season Eight comics (arc: "Wolves At The Gate" by Drew Goddard) is used here.

:_**Wednesday, 11th October 2000**_:

Buffy was right. I should have stayed at home. Valencies, electron orbitals, binding energies? All phooey! I think about my latest quarrel with Buffy instead of listening to my chemistry lecture. Things haven't been right between us since my senior year at high school, since after Faith seduced me.

This was how it all happened. Dawn and Anya, but mostly Dawn, summoned a creepy vampire me from another 'verse. Oops! After Dawn had tranquilised Vamp Willow, we all surveyed the unconscious creature.

"It's extraordinary." Giles had said with dispassionate fascination.

"It's horrible! That's me as a vampire?" I was really freaked out. "I'm so evil and skanky."

"And like totally gay." said Dawn with seemingly disturbing relish. Everyone looked at her. "She tried to get it on with me. Ew!"

Dawn's comment dismayed me. Buffy misinterpreted my expression and was quick to reassure me. "Just remember, a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person that was."

"Well, actually..." Angel began. Buffy and Xander glared at him. "That's a good point."

I'd been nerving myself for months to come out to the gang. Their less than positive reaction made me decide otherwise. A few weeks later, I'd managed to rescue Faith from a demon. We ended up in her motel room and in her bed. Faith ground her apex along and against my thigh until she came. Then she attended to me. It was rough and not sweet. Her nails drew blood. But it was what my body craved. Tara is often too diffident, too gentle for my liking when it comes to sex. Faith instinctively understood. We snuggled together afterwards and talked.

Faith smiled gently at me and ran her fingers through my hair. "You're wicked cool, Red. I think B's a fool."

"Huh?" I was perhaps not quite back from orgasm heaven.

"She loves you, ya know?" Faith sighed.

I picked up her wistfulness, did the algebra, and found the wrong soulution for 'x'. "What's Buffy like in the sack? Does she make that high-pitched squeal? I call it her 'shoe sale noise'..."

Faith's eyes went flat and a glimmer of hurt flickered across her face before it hardened. "I wouldn't know, Willow." A beat. "I am not a whore." Then she frogmarched me out of the room.

For days afterwards, I was despondent. Buffy finally got the whole sorry mess out of me. She didn't interrupt as I told her. But Buffy only heard what she wanted to hear. Faith had taken advantage of me, she said, I was too innocent to know that I was gay. I remember trying to reason with her but Buffy was adamant. Her ideal vision of me trumped my own self-knowledge. And that was the beginning of how Faith became a pariah, and eventually Buffy's victim.


	9. CHAPTER NINE: TARA

**CHAPTER NINE: TARA**

:**_Wednesday, 11th October 2000_**:

Willow and Buffy arrive separately at the Magic Box. Their expressions are similarly angry, sad and pensive. I think they've had another fight. Giles has shut up the shop and given Anya the afternoon off.

"Tara has already mastered how to control her strength."

"Only a day? It took me longer." Buffy pouts.

"I'd imagine it has a lot to do with her having been a witch. Control is necessary to properly work magic. Also," Giles glances at Willow, "Tara had an additional incentive."

Willow is radiant. "That's great, baby!" She smothers me with hugs and kisses. It's like Will is an overexuberant Red Setter.

"Buffy was a cheerleader, wasn't she?" I ask curiously. "Doesn't that require discipline? It is kinda athleticky."

Buffy hangs her head. "Not really. At Hemery, you had to be minimally competent but prettiness and popularity were what got you on the squad."

Giles coughs politely. "In addition, Tara and I discussed your encounter with that, little girl did you say? And the matter of the Seed."

Buffy is stunned. "You take too much on yourself, Giles!" she exclaims wrathfully.

He is unrepentant. "I did what I thought was necessary. Also, I believe you mentioned that the Seed was for the SLAYERS to protect." Buffy blinks, reluctantly nods.

"I'd like you to go through your account again. Leave out no detail."

"OK. We'll go into your office. Will, you wait here." orders Buffy.

"We're telling Willow too." I say.

"Oh, are we?" Buffy raises a sceptical eyebrow.

"Will needs to know for her own protection. You'll be doing her, and us, no favours otherwise."

"I'm in danger?" squeaks Willow apprehensively.

Buffy glowers at Giles and me. Then sighs. "OK, then." She turns to Willow. "I'm sorry, Will, I'm so sorry." Then Buffy begins.


	10. CHAPTER TEN ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TEN ALPHA: BUFFY**

**A/N:** Dialogue from "No Place Like Home" by Douglas Petrie is used here.

:**_Tuesday, 3rd October 2000_**:

The nun was dying and she knew it. The vampire I'd just slain had taken too much blood. "My journey's done, I think." she whispered.

I was having none of this, tried to get her up. "Don't get metaphory on me. We're going."

Her piercing gaze was urgent. "You have to...The Seed. You must protect The Seed."

"Protect The Seed." I made another futile attempt to get her on her feet. "Right, I know, we'll do it together! Far, far from here." By this point even stubborn old me had to acknowledge that this woman, in her pale green robe, was going to die.

I studied her sharp-featured face as she said "Many have...died...many more, if neither of you...keep it safe.

"How? What it is it?" I asked. What did she mean by "neither"?

"The Seed is wonder. It's The Source. It is The Door..."

"What does it look like? Where is it?"

The nun coughed. Regained her breath. "It has always been in this place. For centuries it had a different form. My sisters...it's only keepers. Then... The Master found us, stole it. You destroyed him, we retrieved it...We had to hide The Seed...Gave it consciousness, context, connection. Ensouled it, moulded it into flesh. And sent it to you both." Again with the dual personages.

I remembered what I'd seen in trance earlier that day. A beloved face fading in and out of a graduation photo. Someone who wasn't at the door when I answered it but then one was. "Willow."

"She is The Seed." she confirmed.

"You put that thing in my life." I was angry, grief-stricken.

"We knew the Slayers would...protect." Slayers? Faith?

"My memories...my friends'..."

"We built them."

I felt violated. "Then unbuild them. This is my life you're-"

The nun was implacable. "You cannot abandon..."

"I didn't ask for this. I don't even know what...Why?"

"Human. Human, now, and in danger. Please, she is...an innocent in this, and she needs you."

"She's not my friend."

"She doesn't know that." she exhaled and didn't breathe again.


	11. CHAPTER TEN BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TEN BRAVO: BUFFY**

:**_Tuesday, 3rd October 2000_**:

I wasn't necromancer girl so no more answers to the many questions I still had. I bent down and closed the dead woman's eyes. I saw about her neck a pendant depicting a tree, a snake coiling around it in an embrace. Giles would have to see this. I'd asked her why these convent enchantresses had turned The Seed into a person. I could make a guess, I think. They didn't trust me to safeguard a mere object, no matter how vital. But a human with a soul? Someone with Willow's special personality? My memories and this girl, had been handcrafted to appeal to my protective instincts. God what sly bitches!

"Hello." I heard a child's voice from behind me. I turned and saw a little girl in a somewhat old-fashioned red dress. Sunday best. Her gaze was ancient, confident, full of playful malice. "A small heap of dust and another unfortunate barbecue fork incident." she remarked.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"Don't be anile, Buffy Summers. Names have power. You may call me...whatever you like."

"I think Rhoda Penmark would suit you well." She had that prissy, psycho neatness.

Rhoda was amused, laughed. "Speaking of seeds, good or bad, what did the recently deceased have to say on the subject?" She dismissed my incipient reply with a commanding gesture. "That was a rhetorical question. I don't care what you know."

"Oh." I was nonplussed.

"A little information. Many factions desire The Seed, two in particular. You can deny it to them, and save this world, by simply destroying it."

"What's your motive?" I asked her suspiciously.

"I love trouble and hate chaos." she replied. What was that supposed to mean?

"And what's the cost? There are always strings."

"I've told you the price. Enjoy your agonizing, Slayer." She smiled spitefully.

Then Rhoda vanished in a burst of glaring, migraine-inducing whìte light.

She knew! Oh, Rhoda knew that Willow was The Seed. And could I? Would I? Kill Will?


	12. CHAPTER ELEVEN ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER ELEVEN ALPHA: WILLOW**

:_**Wednesday, 11th October 2000**_:

Giles puts a mug of tea in front of me. There's a plate of cookies too. "I've made you a good strong brew with plenty of sugar. You've had a shock, Willow, and this will help." His voice is kind.

I think I need to sit down which I am 'cause, hey! Tara's face is snuggled against my side as she kneels beside me, rubbing my tummy in a slow, circular motion. She likes to do that when I'm upset, my Tara-koala. Buffy's arms are doing the octopus thing around my shoulders as her head nestles into my neck. She's standing up and must be getting cramp as I haven't said anything for several minutes now.

"Oh, look!" I say with wonder. "Giles has used some of his jealously guarded Ceylon tea from Whittards of Chelsea. It is Ceylon, isn't it? And there are McVities Chocolate Hobnobs! Which have escaped the dread cookie-eating monsters called Buffy, Dawn and Xander."

I burst into giggles which are more like sobs. Then I start crying in earnest, the Willow snot machine in full production mode. Eventually, I get to the hiccoughing stage. Buffy must be really concerned as she let me blow my nose on her new sweater while I bawled. I sip the oversweet and now lukewarm tea. My trembling eases. Wise people those English. The cookies are scarfed down as quick as boiled asparagus. I'm entitled, I'm not feeling good.

"Oh, darn!" exclaims Buffy. She points to a box of unused tissues on the other side of the table. Then pouts


	13. CHAPTER ELEVEN BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER ELEVEN BRAVO: WILLOW**

:_**Wednesday, 11th October 2000**_:

"So what now?" I ask the others. "Those monks went all Ministry of Truth on you guys. I'm feeling like Comrade Ogilvy here."

There is puzzlement in Buffy's face. "It's a literary allusion." Giles tells her. "George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'."

"Dawn's right." admits Buffy wrily. "I should crack open a book. I miss so much."

"How long, how long have I been, you know, actually existing?" I ask.

Buffy frowns in consideration. "I think they knew Tara was going to be Slayerized. So I'd guess after she and Dawn broke up but before Faith's death."

I feel bereft as one of the implications hits me. "But after Faith was in her coma. She never knew me, we never..." I'm too full of misery to go on.

"She came to me in a dream just before she died. She wanted me to tell you she was sorry." says Buffy.

"But it turns out she never ever hurt me." I counter.

"She didn't know that." Buffy sighs. "This is such a damn muddle."

"I'm angry at having my memories altered." says Tara flatly."I didn't consent to this. They had no right." We've almost certainly been intimate since I came along. She's effectively been raped. I look down at the floor. She lifts my chin and aqua eyes look deeply into my own. There's ferocity in her gaze. "It's not your fault, Will. Now, that I know what's going on I can choose. And I choose to love- YOU!"

"But-" I protest.

"We can't touch the past, sweetie." says Tara. "All that was, is now memory. This history these nuns created is as ephemeral as the actual one, the true story as unreal as the false."

"And I choose to be your friend." declares Buffy. "You were dumped on me, but I wanna keep you." She kisses me on my forehead.

I don't deserve such a friend and such a lover, such riches. I embrace Buffy and Tara, cling to them fiercely. For this one moment, everything is all right.


	14. CHAPTER TWELVE ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER TWELVE ALPHA: TARA**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

As we're sitting outside the Espresso Pump, sipping coffee and munching muffins, Buffy remarks "Ya know, your stutter, it's completely gone."

"It has?" I ask in surprise.

"Well, you always did it less around the gang." she says. Her face falls."Except for me. I really scared you when I gave you that shovel speech, didn't I? I'm sorry."

"You did it to protect Willow. I can relate, sweetie" I slurp some more sugary, caffeinated goodness. "So does being a Slayer often change you? Other than the obvious, I mean."

Buffy looks uncomfortable. "It did me. Don't know about Kendra or Faith. I'll tell you sometime. Just not today." Her teeth tear off a big chunk of muffin. "How's Will?"

"She managed to get to sleep last night." I notice Buffy smirking. "What?"

"Oh, Willow was pretty tired yesterday. So I thought..."

"She couldn't sleep Tuesday. She was too anxious." I glare at Buffy. "Buffy! Surely you didn't imagine I'd be intimate with Willow when I couldn't control my own strength?" My God, Buffy could be so dense at times!

Buffy puts her head in her hands. "Oh! Foot in mouth alert! Shoe leather has such a vile taste."

I change the subject. "So what's the dealio for today?"

"Well, we need to get you some custom slaying togs." She waves a credit card at me. "Giles' treat. Then back to the Magic Box for Slayage 101 with Giles and me."

"Okey-doke. Sounds like a plan. I got classes this afternoon, mind." I pick up my purse. " Oh, yeah. I got this idea about asking Spike..."


	15. CHAPTER TWELVE BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER TWELVE BRAVO: TARA**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

Time to meet Willow for lunch before classes. It's hard to take in that my Willow-tree has only been around for a handful of months, at best. It's also frightening: the sheer amount of magical mojo needed, the intrusively extensive knowledge of the Scooby Gang required...I'm not one for murder, wholesale or otherwise, but I could kill those nuns, I so could. Memories are identity and if that's meddled with, then just how much of me is still me? And in spite of my words to Willow yesterday, the care with which, last night, I showed her how beloved and cherished she is... She's not to blame, focus on that, Tara! She needs me, needs Buffy. She's the true victim here, created as a means and not an end, the fleshly vehicle for a numinous thing, a beguiling fiction to ensnare the Slayers. Aargh! I'm so full of rage and grief. I've lost my magic which Mama taught me since I knew the difference 'twixt right and wrong. I know that my power is still within me, has merely changed into something equally a gift. Merely! My heart tells me I've been robbed of something precious. But Willow is also precious. She is my bones' desire, the marrow of my soul. And this also true for Buffy. When she threatened me with that Texan funeral, I violated Buffy's privacy, read her aura and saw she is as deeply in love with Willow as I am. Will Buffy enertain that proposition I made? She promised to give it thought and I hope she accepts. But I worry about jealousy, I worry- Oh, there's my Willow! And despite myself, my spirits lift.


	16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN ALPHA: BUFFY**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

The trip to the mall never materializes. Tara nixes that from the get-go: "I've seen the state of your clothes after patrol. New things would be a waste. So it's the thrift store."

"But Tare-" I begin and then shut up. Tara is giving me this LOOK. She'd make a great mother but it'd be, as Giles would say, the nadir of irresponsibility. He once told me about a newly-called Slayer who had a small son. She was killed by some anonymous vamp in a New York subway car. I think I'd like my kids to have children of their own before orphaning them. Which brings me to the better of two suggestions Tara made to me.

"I've heard that Spike has killed two Slayers, right?" she says.

"Uh-huh." I think I can see where she's going with this.

"So why don't we ask him how he did it." Tare continues.

"And develop a counter to whatever move he used." I finish for her. It's a good idea. That vampire Tara saved me from had been covered in grave dirt. A newbie. Who had managed to disarm and almost kill me with my own weapon. "It's about time Spike earned his keep. Good call Tara!"

She smiles this adorable half-grin which quickly fades. "I've got another thing to ask you." Tara says seriously. "Will you hear me out to the end and then think about it?" Her mouth quirks. "You do have a rep for being...impulsively volatile."

"I guess." I acknowledge. "Spill."

As she tells me, my mouth drops open in astonishment. Too astonished to interrupt with one of my outbursts of self-righteous rage. When she finishes, I yell "Are you serious? More to the point, are you crazy? You must be kidding, right?"

"I've never been more serious in my almost twenty years." A glint of humour in her eyes. "And I'm known to be a pretty serious person."

"I-" I cut myself off. I don't know what to say.

"Buffy, just think about it." Tara pleads. "I want Willow to be safe and I believe this will improve her chances."

"It's for my Wills." I nod at Tara. "OK, I'll consider your...proposal. But ultimately it's her decision."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." Tara says. "So what kinda clothing do I need for slaying...?"


	17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN BRAVO: BUFFY**

:_**Thursday, 12th October 2000**_:

I enter Tara's dorm room bearing potables, snackables and watchables. Fixings for the video night extravaganza we have planned. The combined sugar, salt and preservatives in my offerings are enough to cause a spike in the nation's health statistics. Not that I will have to worry about diabetes, hypertension or cancer. I'm a Slayer on a hellmouth. Life expectancy of a mayfly in a monsoon. I've never been in Tare's room before. Kinda pretty, I love the Christmas lights!

"Hey, Will. Tara not here yet?"

"Oh, she's got to finish up some research in the library." Willow replies. "What ya bring?"

I lay out the videos on the bed so Willow can see.

"Action movies?" Will puts her hands on her hips. How unflinchingly stern she looks. It's so cute. "Buffy!" she chides.

"I did bring 'The Princess Bride'." I say in my defense. "Without which a video night would be..."

"Inconceivable!" we chorus, giggling.

"So how did the shopping trip go?" Willow asks.

'm

"I used all my many powers of persuasion, including sticking out my trembling bottom lip, tears and a tantrum." I'm hyperbolising slightly. " But Tara would not be swayed. To the thrift store we must perforce go."

"Aw. You so like to dress people up." Willow says. Then with mock sympathy: "Poor baby! You musta had a Barbie-deprived girlhood."

"Perhaps it's for the best." I sigh. "Hooker chic would not suit Tara."

Will laughs. "Yeah, I remember that Hallowe'en when you-" A shadow passes over Willow's face. "Oh."

"Hey." I give her a morale-boosting hug. Tare's right. I do love this woman. But sharing Willow? With Tara? Is that gonna work? Does Willow want me that way? Do I want to take this risk after Angel and Faith caused me such pain? Will suddenly grins at me, the sun taking off its mourning clothes. If anyone's worth whiplash of the heart, she is. I give myself a determined nod. I'll do this.


	18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN ALPHA: WILLOW**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

The thought of Tara with raccoon eyes and a tight, leather mini makes me smile. It's so not Tara, it's ridiculous. "I'm poopin' the party before it begins. I'm a bad, bad person, Buff."

"Poop is for the potty, Wills." Buffy quips. She casts her gaze around Tara's room. "We usually do these things at Buffy Central. Why not the usual venue?" she asks inquisitively.

"Oz had a talk with Tara earlier. He has Dawn problems." I inform Buffy. "She's deratted Amy, you know."

"Isn't that a good thing?" says Buffy.

"Apparently not. Tara and Oz think Amy's bad for Dawn. Also, Dawn has been casting lickerish eyes at my Tara." I have all this involuntary empathy with Dawnie over this issue but she chose Oz, rejected Tara. Hard cheese with stale bread and water!

"Right." Buff says. "Hence the preemptive avoidiness. Is your mom in Sunnydale then?"

I scowl with pretend affrontedness. "I'm beginning to think you don't like Tara's room. Yes, Dr Sheila Luxemburg is in town." I'm now annoyed for realsies. The thought of my mother has that effect.

Buffy looks sympathetic. "Your mom not OK with Sapphic Willow?"

"An embarassing incident took place. Actually, it was mortifying, humiliating, degrading. I so wanna get Dawn to turn my mom into a baby goat. We shall speak of it no more."

Curiosity is afire in Buffy's hazel-flecked green eyes. "Will! You can't leave me hanging here. Tell me!" Buffy then adds sententiously "A therapy-worthy experience shared is a therapist's fee saved."

I feign resignation. "OK." I'm looking forward to making Buff blush. I'm having one of my very seldomly naughty moments. She is kind of virginal, like the goddess Artemis, and somewhat prudish too. Tee-hee. This'll be fun!


	19. CHAPTER FOURTEEN BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN BRAVO: WILLOW**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

I glance slyly at Buffy as I begin. "I was polishin' Tara's pearl with my tongue when-"

"Huh? What? Oh!" Buffy's face is so red that it could beat a beetroot in a can of red paint.

I smirk, cool as a cucumber. Which simile is not a good idea as it reminds me of this argument I had with Tara. I blush extra flamey. We never did decide whether it was physically feasible or not...

"Oh, God! Brain bleach! Must drink brain bleach." she wails. "That was definitely too much information, Will." Buffy says. She considers for a moment. "Or maybe it wasn't ENOUGH information. I can never tell with myself sometimes. Pray continue, Miss Luxemburg. Tell me more! I'm a Slayer, I can deal."

I'm momentarily flabbergasted. Is Buffy flirting with me? Nah! Course not! "My mom walked in on us." I announce dramatically.

"Oh, I can't bear to look!" Buffy whimpers.

"All our clothes and undies are scattered higgledy-piggledy, hither and yon. Some of them have probably been thrown into the next galaxy." I pause in thought. Is that the Larger or Smaller Magellanic Cloud? I can never remember. "As we're scrambling to get dressed AND save our dignity, my mother just stands there, channeling the spirits of long-dead radical feminists..."

Buffy is writhing on the floor in paroxysms of giggles. Or possibly giving birth to a litter of rabid ferrets. No pity for my pain and humiliation at the hands of the parental unit there.

"And Tara just loses it and yells at my mom-"


	20. CHAPTER FIFTEEN ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN ALPHA: TARA**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

They don't hear me come in. Buffy is gasping and squealing, contorted with merriment. Willow is enraptured by her own dramaturgy. "Hi." I say to them, giving them a little wave when they see me.

Will jumps, puts her hand on her heart. "Wow! Super ninja sneakiness!"

"Yes, soon I shall construct my own lightsabre and become a Jedi Slayer." I joke.

Willow scowls at Buffy. "You corrupted my girl with your evil Star Wars references." she whines.

"Speaking of sneaky, where's our sneaky cat? Where's Trixie?" I ask.

"MISS KITTY FANTASTICO." Will looks under the bed, no mean feat with a sprained wrist, and gently drags out the black kitten "Is here."

"So you haven't decided on a name for her?" says Buffy.

"Oh, we've decided." Willow replies. "We're just not in agreement."

"So Tare. Coppertop here says you socked it to her mom." Buffy snickers at Will.

"Buffy! What did I say about using that name?" Willow is indignant.

"Serves you right for using adult content." Buffy retorts. "Polishing the pearl, indeed!" She frowns. "Does that really mean what I think it does, or is it perfectly innocent?"

"Willow!" I exclaim with reproach.

"Yes, Will. Embarassing Little Miss Shy, how could you?" Buffy turns to me. "C'mon Tara! details, details, details."

"I think Willow has been giving you enough details, Buffy." I say drily.

Buffy makes forlorn, bedraggled kitty-cat eyes at me. Seeing I'm immovable, she tries another tack. "I liberated this bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk from a certain tweed-clad acquaintance of ours."

I snatch the blue-wrappered candy from her. "Done."


	21. CHAPTER FIFTEEN BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN BRAVO: TARA**

:**_Thursday, 12th October 2000_**:

All three us are on the bed, Willow in the middle. She's at least a couple of inches taller than Buffy and me. It gives the seating arrangement a pleasing physical, as well as conceptual, symmetry. I've unwrapped my stolen chocolate and broken it in two, giving Willow one of the halves.

Willow breaks off a square and drops into Buffy's palm. "A little taste, so ya know where the path of vice can lead and what losses it can bring."

Buffy sulks. "Meanie."

I smile to see them both bonding so well. I get on with the story. "When Will first came out, her mom was proud of her."

"So what changed?" asks Buffy.

"Well, she was under the misapprehension that Willow's gayness was a political act."

"Don't quite get ya, Tare." Buffy says. She makes an attempt to regain her precious candy.

I'm ready for her, slap her hand away. It's a feint though, Buffy is after Will's share of the chocolate. But Willow is wily, and wise in the ways of chocovores, and Buffy's prey eludes her. I throw a quelling glare at Buffy. She singularly fails to quail. I go on. "Will's mother is what they call a political lesbian."

"No truckin' with the stubbly crowd." Willow puts in. "Sorta like Amazons. But not in a Xena and Gabrielle way."

"And not necessarily into the hot girl lurve either." I continue. "Some of them are agin' that."

"Why?" Buffy is nonplussed.

"Oh, 'cause straight guys are turned on by lesbians." Will explains. "So if two girls are doin' the nasty then it's basically pornography."

Buffy snorts in derision. "Men fantasise about women in a nunnery too. And I'm pretty sure they, the good sisters that is, aren't having sex."

"I pointed out that very flaw when I was ranting at her." I say.

Willow beams at me. "My mom NEVER listens to me but she did to Tara."

"I was very angry. One thing I said, which pretty much summed up my feelings, was: 'a private act of sexual communion cannot possibly be construed as being for the entertainment of men'." I put some candy into my mouth to melt. "Plus, we were interrupted at a...um...crucial moment."

"Anyways, enough about my mother." Will then picks up one of the videos, commands me in her haughtiest tones "Farm Girl! Put 'The Princess Bride' on."

"As you wish." I smile sweetly at my Willow. "Coppertop." Willow throws a pillow at me.


	22. CHAPTER SIXTEEN ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER SIXTEEN ALPHA: BUFFY**

**A/N:** Buffy quotes Lewis Caroll in this chapter.

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

There are dozens of churches in Sunnydale and many of them have clock-towers. It takes a few minutes for the discordant chimes to subside as they mark the Witching Hour. Can't they synchronise them or something? This is America, the can-do nation. On the other hand it's also America, the don't-tread-on-me nation. A big no to dastardly federal plots like making the clocks agree. It's been a fun evening. We've laughed, wept and sniffled our way through 'The Princess Bride'; we've winced at Keanu's wooden acting in 'The Matrix' and agreed that Jonathan couldn't help but do a better job as the lead; we've watched anxiously as Ripley rescued Newt from the Queen Alien. Now it's showtime.

"The time has come to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings..." I declaim, doubtless misquoting the darn thing.

Willow pretends shock. "You've read a book? The apocalypse is upon us. We must call Giles at once!"

"Yes, Will. Books with syllables and words and sentences and stuff. I loved reading Alice when I was a kid." I frown. "Didn't like the Disney cartoon though. Gave me the wiggins."

"Really?" says Tara. "It was the other way round with me."

"Me too!" Willow then asks "So we're gonna have a talk. What about?"

"It's an idea of Tara's." I tell her. Will and I direct our eyes at Tare.

Tara takes a deep breath. "When you and I started dating, Willow, Buffy gave me a friendly warning."

Will casts a venomous glance at me. "Friendly warning, huh? Like with Veruca? When you beat the carp, crap dammit! Out of her?" The anger then goes from Willow, is replaced by pained confusion. "But that didn't happen."

I take her hand. Trace a tiny heart on her palm with my thumb. "We'll have to accept it all as truth. I want it to be true! Even the bad stuff. If we keep second-guessing our memories, we'll go mad."

"I think I'm startin' to." Willow mutters bleakly.

"You're coping better than I would have, sweetie." Tara tells her. Willow springs to her feet.


	23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER SIXTEEN BRAVO: BUFFY**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

Willow snarls in misery and frustration. "That's easy for you to say!" She gets up and begins pacing, hands moving in brittle gestures. "It's eating me up inside, ya know? I wish I knew when I was...actually me! It wouldn't make things any better, necessarily, but I'd have somethin' solid." Will points at Tara. "I'd know if Tara and I really fell in love. 'Cause if we were both programmed to be starry-eyed lesbian couple of the year it would tear my heart into little, hurty, bloody gobbets. And that's a disturbing image. But at least I'd know!" In the course of Willow's orbit around the small room she comes back to me. "And you Buff! I've all these precious moments. Moments that I remember sharing with you. Best friends for ever, and more than friends if you weren't so damned straight! And another thing-" Will freezes. Puts her hand over her mouth, looks guiltily at Tara. "Oh, God! Tara, I'm so sorry, I-"

Tara silences Willow with a loving kiss. "I've known for quite a whiles, my sweet willow-tree." Tare then asks me "Should we do the...uh...talk thing some other time?"

"No. Best to do it now." I reply. "Wills," I announce. "I'm actually kinda gay."

Willow rolls her eyes gives me a Buff-you're-being-airhead-Valley-Girl-again look. Amazingly versatile face my Wills has. "The nuns musta programmed you think that way."

"Faith." I counter simply.

"Oh! So you did...?"

"Once. In that dream Faith and I shared. When she died." My mask of insouciant Buffy slips a little.

"A reconciliation, a consummation and a farewell." Tara muses.

"It's better than nothin'" Will says. Trite but true. Also sad.

I sigh, pat the bed beside me. "Come back to your place and we'll talk more."


	24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ALPHA: WILLOW**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

Tara has made me some chamomile and honey tea. I'm still antsy though.

"Will," asks Buffy. "If your mom's supposed to have this no-men-until-the-Patriarchy-is-overthrown kind of a deal, then where do you fit into all that?"

Does it really matter? I think to myself. We've already gone over the unhistory thing so why is she asking? "Sperm donor. One Ira Rosenberg, a cultural anthropologist. One of my mother's colleagues."

"Another 'burg', huh?" Buffy muses.

"With an 'e'. Which makes him a mountain and me a fortress." I inform her. "Are you going somewhere with this?"

"Yes, I am." Buff replies. "So your dad's firing blanks?"

"Oh, he's my mom's brother. My Uncle Jeff."

"Oh, that sounds kinky!" Buffy looks a bit nauseated.

"No kink." I assure her. "He's strictly cover story. Mom wants to be radical AND respectable." A pause. "She didn't tell me he wasn't my dad until I was twelve." I prod Buffy with my finger. "Your point?"

"It just strikes me as hinky, that's all. I mean, wouldn't it have been a lot easier if those nuns made a little baby? My daughter f'rinstance? Riley could so plausibly've been the dad, or even..." Buffy shudders. "Parker."

"Buffy's right, you know." Tara says. "There'd have been no shortage of babysitters: we've got a whole Scooby gang. And we're a bit more responsible than the average bear. Plus, a college girl getting pregnant? Not so unusual."

I look at Buffy in bemusement. Sometimes, she seems only a bit brighter than Harmony. Then she pulls some legerdemain of cogitation out of a hat. Tricksy that's what she is. Then I notice that I feel a lot calmer. She's done that. Very tricksy, indeed!


	25. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER SEVENTEEN BRAVO: WILLOW**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

"OK. Enough of the speculative." orders Buffy. "We'll sleep on it." She looks at Tara. "Tare had just gotten to the part where I threatened her with dire consequences."

"It was sweet of you. Protecting Willow like that." Tara says. Then she puts her hands on my shoulders, gazes into my eyes. What lovely ultramarine peepers she's got. "I...um...peeked at Buffy's aura and saw something."

"Saw something?" I'm alarmed. "Is Buffy OK? You didn't sense a hyena energy, did you? 'Cause hyena possession, it's- "

"She's in love with you." Tara cuts through my babble.

"She is?" Well, that's incisive of you, Willow Luxemburg. "She is? Wow!"

"I know you're in love with Buffy, Willow." Tara tells me calmly. Yes, she would have to tell me calmly, considering. "And I want you and her to start dating."

"Dating? With Buffy? What about you? Are you, are you breaking up with me?" I feel cold dread well up in my tummy.

"No." says Tara embracing me with a hint of Slayer strength. "I wanna share you with Buffy. If you're willing."

"Anoxia of real concern here." I gasp. Tara loosens her grip. "This is. Oh! Wow! Are you crazy? How could this work?"

"That was pretty much my reaction, Wills." Buffy says. "But Tara's reasons sorta make sense."

"And what are Tara's reasons?" I demand.

"My reasons?" Tara asks. "I love you and I want you safe. You need me for this and Buffy. She loves you. Slayers live dangerously. If I get through the night's peril I'll be able to come home to you. If Buffy can't do that, what's she gonna feel? Despair. Because she can't have the woman she loves. That kind of despair when there's so many ways to commit suicide by monster? It's not fair to her. Do you understand, Willow?"

"I want to do this." Buffy looks oddly shy.

I'm feeling too emotional for logic here but it's not a logic thing. This is a heart and gut thing. And if I have time to think on it... "Yes." I say with all my will and heart. "But there's a condition."


	26. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ALPHA: TARA**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

"There is?" I ask Willow warily.

Will nods. "I'm the point of a chevron and you two are its arms. That's the shape of what you're suggesting, yeah? It's geometry." Trust Willow to bring math into it.

Buffy and I exchange glances. "Go on." Buffy says. I can see the tension coiling within her spine.

"You guys probably think the chevron's point is on top, being supported by you two. But I disagree."

Buffy and I wait in silence for Will to continue.

"But the chevron's pointing downwards.. You're pressing on me. I'll be taking all that weight. Do you get it at all?"

"Triangles." Buffy says suddenly. "Triangles are stronger than chevrons."

"Oh. You want Buffy and me together." I realize aloud. "But I'm not in love with Buffy, Willow. Nor she with me."

"But you can be friends, right?" Will asks.

"Tare and I are friends." Buffy states firmly.

"That's of the good." Willow says. "You mentioned suicide earlier, Tara. I'm thinking murder."

I'm shocked. "I would never-" Buffy growls angrily.

"Not deliberately. But as it stands, neither of you mean as much to each other as both of you do to me." Will picks up an unopened soda. "You're only human. You'll get jealous, you'll try and hide it. Especially from yourselves. And then one day, you, Buffy or you, Tara, will be just a little too slow coming to each other's aid. One of you will die. The survivor will feel real bad about the whole thing. She'll cry at the funeral. But she'll have me to herself."

I can't deny the possibility. "You want Buffy and me to value each other as much as you do."

"Uh-huh." Willow agrees. "So starting Friday night. You two will date."


	27. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER EIGHTEEN BRAVO: TARA**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

"Will!" protests Buffy. "You can't order me to do that!"

Willow wags her finger. "Course I can. Question is, will you obey? In any case, it's a suggestion not a command. No shotgun marriage here." She gives up on her fumbling attempts to open her soda. "Someone please open this?"

I take the can from her and pull the ring. "I see the sense in it." I think about what I've learned in Greek history. "You know, among the Spartans, gay men would fight alongside their lovers in battle."

"Like guy Amazons?" asks Buffy.

"Sorta." I confirm.

"I'm not even sure if Tare-bear's my type." says Buffy trying to put off the inexorable doom that Willow has decreed for us.

Will scoffs, rolls her amused, hazel eyes at Buffy. "You're attracted to her Slayerness. You as good as admitted that."

"I did?" Bemused Buffy's back in residence.

"Yes, Buff." Will sing-songs. "Tare! Tare-bear!" This from the pot who calls me her Tara-koala.

Buffy flushes with embarrassment then looks at me speculatively. "Yeah, I did, didn't I?" She laughs. "So, TARE. Where d'ya wanna go for datey fun?"

I yawn. "Tell you breakfast time. I'm too exhausted to think."


	28. CHAPTER NINETEEN ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER NINETEEN ALPHA: BUFFY**

**A/N:** Dialogue from the Season Eight Comics (Arc: "Time Of Your Life" by Joss Whedon) is used here.

:_**Friday, 13th October 2000**_:

I'm watching myself. She, this other me, is fighting a purple-haired girl. Both of them bear red-bladed axes hafted with stakes. It is clear to me that Purple is a Slayer. She has the speed, the strength, the instincts. But something is missing in her: knowledge to give assurance to her strikes, feints and dodges, that half-remembered experience from previous Slayers that needs to be teased out with training and sparring, slaughter and survival. Purple has the advantage of unpredictability but Other Buffy's gonna take her down. It's that obvious. But why, oh why is Other Buffy fighting in a dress? I stand on the roof of a tall building. I've seen this skyline many a time on TV. It's a little different. An unfamiliar tower squats where the World Trade Center should be. This is New York. But she's decayed, her skyscrapers are giant's bones of pitted brick and moth-eaten mortar. Beside me is a swirling, golden vortex I guess is a portal. The smell of the city is awful, rust and swamp.

Other Buffy vanquishes her opponent. "I'm sorry." she tells Purple.

"About what?" I ask Other Buffy. "Failing?" My voice sounds like Willow's but it has some of the quality of her vampiric doppelgänger. I'm blocking Other Buffy's access to the portal.

Other Buffy looks gaunter than I ever recall being. She's older, terrible things have marked her with bad wisdom. "You know I'll go through you." she states.

"And you know you'll have to." I confirm.

"Why?" she asks lornly.


	29. CHAPTER NINETEEN BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER NINETEEN BRAVO: BUFFY**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

I sneer at her. "Maybe I think the Twentieth Century can soldier on just fine without you." I notice I'm wearing a dark crimson gown of raw silk. Its short sleeves reveal black leather worn beneath.

"I'm cute and blonde and popular but I'm not stupid, Will." Other Buffy says. "You dragged me here and then told me exactly how to get out. Everything, every lie, to get us here. Why? What happened?" There's pain in her face. "Why does it have to be me?"

I bow my head, hood my eyes. I finally understand I'm just an observer. This little scene is gonna end in misery and death and I can't stop it. "It's a long story."

She strikes, swift as a serpent, thrusting the sharp shaft between my breasts, into my heart. The impact lifts me off my feet. Pale green light and white jags of lightning burst from my body. There's a concussion like a sonic boom, like thunder, like the beat of a massive drum. My last sight is of Other Buffy's expression. It is indescribable. I recognize that depth of agony, that intensity of sorrow. I recognize them because this was what I felt when, two years gone, I plunged my sword into Angel's chest. A needful act to stop Acathla entering the world, to seal the threshold of hell with beloved blood. A tear trickles from Other Buffy's left eye.

I scream and flail in the throes of grief and terror. I'm entangled in a sleeping bag. A blonde woman pins me to the floor with firm but gentle strength. "Buffy, sweetie." Tara soothes urgently. "It's only a dream. Ease down, hon, ease down."

"I'm Buffy?" I ask hopefully. "Not Willow?"

"All three of us have been dreaming, I think" says Tara. "Dreams of death but not our own." She looks back at the bed. I can hear deep, heaving sobs. It's Willow.

"See to Will." I tell Tara. "I'll be OK."


	30. CHAPTER TWENTY ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY ALPHA: WILLOW**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

The first thing I did when Tara shook me awake from my nightmare was make certain she was still alive. I touched her, kissed her, squeezed her, tasted her, smelt her. Felt her warmth, heard the beat of her heart. I'd have f%$#ed her too, all the better to know, to believe she was alive. Then I saw smears of blood on my arms, her ruined fingertips.

"What the frilly heck?" I asked Tara. She thumbed at the headboard of our bed. Bloody gouges had been clawed into it. A whole fingernail was sticking into the wood. I felt sick.

"Willow, sweetie. Promise me-" Tara shivered. "Promise me that if I, if my time comes...you'll have me cremated. No burial. Scatter my ashes."

I gaped at my love. "What?"

"Promise me!" she said fiercely.

"OK." I was bewildered. "You, you can't die! You mustn't!"

"Not for a very long time if I can help it." said Tara. "But I must never be buried."

Buffy screamed. Tara was loath, very loath to leave me, I could see it in her eyes. Then Buffy started keening. That broke Tara's indecision. She scooped up our kitten from where she'd been cowering and put the trembling animal in my lap. "Look after Trixie while I help Buffy." Tara commanded.

"Miss Kitty Fantastico." I said automatically. In spite of my distress, I was still intent on outstubborning Tara. Any ole cat can be called Trixie. Tara smiled weakly and left my arms.


	31. CHAPTER TWENTY BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY BRAVO: WILLOW**

:**Friday, 13th October 2000**:

I've broken down into convulsions of weeping. Not even Miss Kitty's purrifying powers can console me. I want Tara, I want Buffy. Then Tara is here, then after a while, Buffy.

Buffy kneels at my feet, wraps her arms around my hips. Her right cheek presses against my belly. "I love you Will." Her tears are a torrent.

"Willow, I've brought the first aid kit. Could you see to my..." Tara trails off.

"Buff. Could you shift a little?" I ask her. "Gotta patch Tara up."

"Why? What she do?" Buffy sees Tara's wrecked fingers and the ravaged headboard. "Oh, God!" she cries in horror. Then she looks at me, opens her mouth to say something and then just gawps and stares at me.

"What is it?" I'm alarmed. I can't take any more of all this eldritch jazz. It's very wearing. And causes wrinkles.

"Your eyes! Your hair!" Buffy tells me. Tara gives her an irritated glance.

I fish a compact out of Buffy's purse, look into its small mirror. My eyes are like solid orbs of onyx. There's no white in 'em. My hair seems to be made of fine strands of obsidian, my skin is corpse-white. Veins of sooty blood mar my face. "What the hell?"

"It'll pass." says Tara. "I will explain. But not now."

"But-" I begin.

"Later." Tara actually snaps at me.

Suddenly a shrill ringing fills the room. Buffy goes all defcon girl. Tara snarls, pounces on something. The sound stops.

"OW! Yow! Wow!" Tara has slain the alarm clock and further devastated her damaged digits. "Oh! Yo! Woe!" she continues to whimper. Buffy and I both collapse into giggles. Tara glares at us, gives us the finger. It's the one with the nail torn off. For some reason it makes our apparent glee worse and Tara catches the infection. We all laugh until we sob in exhaustion.


	32. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ALPHA: TARA**

**A/N:** Some of Tara's dialogue is adapted from the Season Six episode "Smashed" by Drew Greenberg

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

"Good God, that's a lot of ice-cream!" I exclaim. Buffy has bought the biggest, most humongous container of ice-cream she could lay her graspy paws on. We're poised, with spoons drawn, to fall upon the hapless goodness within. "I mean, I know...part of our big Rocky Road therapy fun day. But...good God, that's a lot of ice-cream."

We're at Willow's house. Dr Sheila Luxemburg has departed for some academic errand at Berkley. We've spent the morning telling Giles about our nightmares. Tears and terror and torment. Typical Sunnyhell fare.

"Promise me both of you will eat something green tonight. Leafy green, not... gummy green."

Buffy jabs her spoon in my direction. "Tara, I so don't wanna date my mom."

"Sorry." I apologise. We didn't have the stomach for breakfast this morning and inner Momma Tara isn't happy.

We eat silently for a few minutes then Buffy suddenly asks "Do you think I have a weak chin, Will?"

"What?" Willow is taken aback by the question. "There's nothing wrong with your chin. Or your nose."

Buffy frowns. "What's wrong with my nose?"

"Nothing! You've got an excellent schnozz. And, and you've got beautiful eyes. Like lime mixed with chocolate and..." Will scowls at Buffy, slaps her upper arm. "Hey! Stop it, missy!"

I look curiously at Buffy. "What's with the vanity?"

"In my dream, I could see myself through Willow's eyes. And...I've got a weak chin."

"Huh!" Willow scoffs. "In my dream, I saw what Tara sees every day and even though I've got the figure of a twelve-year old boy, Tara still thinks I'm a hot mama-yama!" Will glances uncertainly at me "Don't ya, baby?"

I roll my eyes at the pair of them in amusement and bemusement. "Willow, Buffy, both of you are gorgeous and hot. Now shut up and eat up!"

"Yes, ma'am!" they chorus.


	33. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE BRAVO: TARA**

**A/N:** Dialogue from the Season Five episode "The Gift" by Joss Whedon is used here.

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

Eventually, the ice-cream is all but gone, Buffy running her fingers along the sides of the container, licking the last delicious smears of Rocky Road from her fingers. It's kinda hot.

Buffy breaks the companionable silence that came upon us as we devoured our frozen, confectionary enemy. "So, are we gonna talk about it?"

She means the dreams of course. Should we? Talk about it? I'm suddenly caught in the memory of my nightmare. I stand at the top of a ramshackle tower, twisted into shape out of insanity and detritus. I am there, Dawn is there. A younger Dawn poised at the awkward boundary between girl and woman. Black robe-clad, bound and bleeding from long, shallow cuts incised in her belly.

"Here." I release Dawn from her bonds.

"Buffy, it hurts." She sounds so young, so afraid. I'm Buffy?

"I got it." I soothe in Buffy's voice. "Come here. You're gonna be OK."

A blue-white conflagration erupts below us. "Go!" I urge Dawn.

She doesn't move. "Buffy, it's started." Arcs of energy twitch and spasm outward from the mad chaos. "I'm sorry." she says.

"It doesn't matter." I say. I can sense what Buffy senses, do what she does, say what she says. But I do not feel her emotions, think her thoughts. Only my own are present. Dawn lunges, makes to leap from the tower. I stop her. "What are you doing?"

"I have to jump. The energy." Dawn says.

"It'll kill you." I tell her.

"I know." she says with resignation. "Buffy, I know about the ritual. I have to stop it."

I shake my head. My tone is distraught. "No."


	34. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE CHARLIE: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHARLIE: TARA**

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

How many times, when I was Dawn's lover, did I see her war with her sister? Contending with the verbal weapons of bicker and whine. As in life so in the dream. Dawn and I argue and plead but I, Buffy Me, prevail. I speak the last crumbs of comfort she'll ever hear from me, kiss her tenderly before sprinting to my doom. I know nothing of what's in Buffy's mind but I can feel her body's exultation. I leap, graceful as a dying swan, into the actinic maelstrom. Long, sweet moments of delirious agony and then...I awake with a gasp in an enclosed space. I feel the texture of wood beneath rotting fabric. A coffin. I claw, I tear, I rip myself through oak and earth, sobbing and panting. I-

"TARA!" yells Buffy. My cheek stings from the slap she's just given me.

Willow hugs me. Anxious hazel orbs search my face. "Are you OK, Tara?"

"OK?" I laugh shakily. "No, I, I'm not OK. I'm so glad Giles is gonna find you someone to, to teach you magic."

Will flinches. "I'd hoped you wouldn't make that connection. In MY dream, that wasn't the first time I'd summoned Osiris. Was it?" Fat tears slide down her face. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" I ask harshly. "You didn't do anything to me. This happened to Buffy." Or it will, or it may. Visions are unchancy things."

"Not directly."Willow gently kisses my healing fingers. "I don't wanna learn magic." she bursts out. "I'm, I'm afraid out of it. Of hurting my friends, my loved ones."

"It's too late." I say gently. "Your magic's been awakened. You gotta be trained."

"I'm a hacker, not a witch-doctor!" Will snarls, her big eyes bright with fury.

"I know, Willow." says Buffy. "I didn't want to be the Chosen One. But I was."

"Tell me about it?" asks Willow.

"All right." Buffy sighs. "Tare needs to hear this too. And it doesn't show me at my best."


	35. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO ALPHA: BUFFY**

**A/N:** _An adapted line from the film "Chance" (2002, directed by Amber Benson) is used here._

**:_Friday, 13th October 2000_:**

Why the hell did I agree to this? I own three kinds of secrets: ones to be given, ones to be stolen, ones to be kept. Kept forever, NOT to be volunteered. This is betrayal of self, it's treason. I scan the Luxemburgs' lounge for a diversion, see it in a framed photo of a doe-eyed man with wild hair.

"Hey, Will." I take the picture in my hand. "What's this pic of Einstein doing here?"

"Rosenberg family legend." Willow replies, gazing at me narrowly. "Einstein's first child, Lieserl, is supposed to be Ira's great-grandmother. That clinched the paternity deal for my mom." Will sighs. "I never thought that was actually true, but I liked to pretend it was. Can't do that now." She moves her right hand in a vague spiral. "I feel..."

"Maimed?" Tara suggests. "I've practiced witchcraft always, since I was little." Her voice is bitter.

Willow nods. "Absolutely. You've hammered the sticky-out nail, baby." She looks at me sternly. "Don't think I don't know what you're up to, Buff. You're gonna disclose." Will scrunches up her forehead then lifts her eyebrows. "My uncle pretending to be my dad? Keep shtumm on that, OK? Apart from you two, only Xander knows."

"Oh." realizes Tare. "Then that explains..."

"Explains what?" Willow asks.

"I... um overheard something Spike said to Anya." Tara tells her.

Will frowns. "What? What did he say?"

"Red's mum can't be asexual, she's gotta want to f¥€£ something." Tare blushes.

Willow gapes in angry astonishment, growls in exasperation. "I'm gonna kill Xander!"

I swear I can hear her teeth grind. "Telling Spike..."

"I expect Xander only told Anya, sweetie." Tara tells Will, soothingly. But Willow,

she keeps on steaming.

Tare and I exchange glances. "You rub her tummy, I'll stroke her hair. If that

doesn't work..." I wiggle my fingers menacingly. Consternation crosses Will's face.

"We'll tickle her."


	36. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO BRAVO: BUFFY**

**A/N:** I'm suffering from writer's block so apologies for the quality of this chapter.

:**_Friday, 13th October 2000_**:

Tara and I go directly for the tickle assault option. Willow wriggles and giggles, shrieks and squeaks as we visit our fingerly torments on her tender flesh . She's so adorably cute! After we've finished I congratulate myself on a question well dodged. Alas, it ain't necessarily so. Will and Tare exchange glances.

"Stop stalling, Buffy." Willow says with as much command as a breathless victim of a recent ticklefest can muster. "Get talkin'!"

"Yesterday, you said you'd tell me how becoming the Slayer changed you." Tara puts in. "Now's, you know, good."

"If I must." I grumble. Newly bossy Tara is gonna be a pain, I just know it. I also find her assertiveness... intriguing. "You've never met Cordelia, have you, Tare?" I ask her.

She shakes her head. "No, but Willow's described her. In exhaustive detail."

Will snorts. "She means I ranted." She turns to me. "And what does Cordelia have to do with anything?"

"You know that I used to be a lot like her, once." I tell them. "Actually, I was worse."

Willow's big hazel eyes widen hugely at this admission, threaten to engulf her face. "Worse?"

"Worse." I confirm. "I was sort of a cutprice Kathryn Mertuil."

"You mean like that chick in 'Cruel Intentions'?" asks Tara. Her aquamarine gaze is calming.

"Oh, my God, Buff!" exclaims Will. "You didn't! Not with Dawnie!" She looks very queasy all of a sudden.

"Huh?" I then realize what she's getting at here. EW! "No! Whole leaves and forests, rivers and oceans, mountains and continents, moons and galaxies of NO!"

"Oh." Willow looks decidedly relieved and less panicked. Comparing myself unfavorably with Cordy was not perhaps the best tack to take with Will.


	37. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO CHARLIE: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHARLIE: BUFFY**

**A/N:** This story has recently gotten past 1k hits. A big thank you to all who've read or reviewed it. Special thanks to Dragonwriter17, Wiffyscoob and Wispr for help and advice.

:_**Friday, 13th October 2000**_:

My reluctance to expose myself becomes aversion, turns to near nausea. Deep breaths! Deep breaths! With an act of will, I set my mouth in motion.

"Before I got to be the Slayer, there were only two real people in my world. Me and Dawn." I avoid their gaze. I don't want to see the dismay, the disgust, and worst of all, the distrust which I know, as I tell this story, will seep into Willow's green-flecked hazel eyes, into Tara's blue-green ones. "Mom and Dad were... pets, favorite possessions. I was kinda fond of them but didn't love them. Everyone else? Pawns, threats, scenery. If I wanted something and Dawn was in my way, I wouldn't hesitate to screw her over. I'd feel guilty, she was the one person who 'deserved' that privilege, and make it up to her. But I came first."

I stop, close my eyelids, to gauge Will's and Tare's reaction. The sound of their breathing tells me nothing. I can hear the distant, whiny buzz of a fly.

"I hadn't always been like that. I don't know when I turned into such a bitch or when it started, even. Perhaps when Der Kinderstod killed Celia, perhaps in junior high. But what matters is that I became small, selfish and spiteful."

"Celia? Der Kinderstod?" asks Tara as I pause again.

"Celia was my cousin. Der Kinderstod was a monster. I was eight when Cele died."

"Buffy saw her die." Willow tells her.

Tare touches my arm, squeezes it. "Oh, honey."

I jerk my arm from her gentle grasp. I don't want to be pitied. I so don't.


	38. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE ALPHA: WILLOW**

**:**_**Friday, 13th October 2000**_**:**

Buffy doesn't notice the hurt in Tara's eyes. She's far too busy, holding an exclusive pity party for one and staring at her shoes. Miss Kitty mews at me, demanding attention, kneading me with her teeny paws. Tara wanted to leave her in the dorm but I thought Miss Kitty would be lonely. I pick her up, pop her into Tara's lap. "Look after Trixie for a moment." Puzzlement crosses Tara's face then she smirks triumphantly as she understands my words. Then she smiles, more genuinely, when she comprehends why I said them.

I contemplate Buffy, recalling her other episodes of withdrawal: after she was drowned by The Master, after she killed Angel. After Celia died? Oh, there's a pattern here: death, guilt, exile. Not this time, you don't, Buffy! But how to convince her? I remember (remember!) all the times she put herself in danger for me. But I wasn't there for those and Buffy KNOWS I wasn't there. And I finally realize what Tara meant when I had that existential freakout in the Magic Box; the present gobbles up the future and poops it out as memories. Even if I had been here all along. I'd still not be in a position to know things for sure. Just remember them.

"You sound like you were a piece of work, Buff." I tell her. Buffy nods glumly. "But you're not like that now."

"I don't know, Will." she says forlornly. "Am I?"

"That wasn't a question, missy! I'm telling you: you're not like that now!" I give her my most basilisky stares. Buffy's being difficult and that makes me cranky.


	39. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE BRAVO: WILLOW**

:_**Friday, 13th October 2000**_:

I suddenly know what I have to say, what I have to do. Taking Buffy by her chin, I firmly, but gently, force her gaze upwards. She can only avoid my eyes by closing her own. They're miniature tubs of mint-flavoured ice-cream with milk chocolate chips in 'em. Just how much Rocky Road did I eat? Get a grip, Luxemburg!

"Now listen up, Buffy Anne Summers." I say commandingly. "I'm gonna tell you how it is. Savvy?"

Buffy nods. She could easily break away; Slayer strength and all that. Her eyes are as big as those of a bunny trapped and hypnotized by a fox. Or in this case, a vixen.

"When you told me I was The Seed, you held me until I could say stuff. And that was for quite a while in an uncomfortable position. Would your old self have done that? No. Then you let me me snivel snot and wipe my tears on your new sweater. You'd coveted it for weeks, hoping it would be marked down.. Would your old self have allowed that? Again, no. Then, even though you'd discovered I was really a total stranger to you, you claimed me as a friend. Would your old self have done that? Once more, no. Last night you told me you loved me, love loved me. Would your old self have said that? To a real girl? Let alone a thing, an object like me? For the final time: no!" I breathe in. A babble, a coherent babble. How oxymoronic is that? "Are we crystal, Buff?"

Buffy looks dazed. "I think you broke her, sweetie." remarks Tara.

"Wow, Will." Buffy says at last. "You sure know how to sock it to a girl! Yeah, we're crystal." She then gives me a stern look. "But for the record," I'm pulled into a fierce hug, "You're not just some 'thing'. Clear?" I snuggle into her strong arms, feeling safe, warm and loved. "OK, Buffy." I inhale her scent. "Love you."


	40. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE CHARLIE: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHARLIE: WILLOW**

**A/N: Dialogue from the Season Five episode "Family" and the Season Eight comic arc "The Long Way Home", both by Joss Whedon, is used here.**

:_**Friday, 13th October 2000**_:

Tara's breasts squash against my back as she reaches round to embrace Buffy and me. She kisses the crown of my head. "Every time she... even when Buffy's at her worst... you always make her feel special. How do you do that?" she asks seriously.

"Magic" I reply. This is said with a smirk to hide my bitterness. The fact is all my qualities, be they good, bad or indifferent, ARE the result of magic. Nothin' to do with me, really.

"That's an amazing gal you've got there, Tare." says Buff with affection.

"She's OUR amazing gal. Our Amazon gal." she corrects Buffy.

Impulsively, Buff cranes her neck over my shoulder, meets, tastes Tara's lips. "Ooh, cinnamon buns!" she exclaims.

"Hey, out of the three of us, I'm the Joxer, the joker in the pack." I contradict.

Buffy taps me on the nose with a finger like I'm a naughty kitten. "Stop that!"she snaps crossly.

"Speaking of magic, why can't you teach me, Tara baby?" I ask. "Why does Giles have to find me another teacher?"

Tara's brow furrows into a frown. "There are two reasons." she says thoughtfully. "One is that I can't demonstrate what I know. No witchiness, OK? Two, I'm actually kinda ignorant."

I'm astonished. "Ignorant? How come? I mean, you taught Dawn and she's one powerful witch. Adam wouldn't have been taken down without her."

"See, I learned witchcraft from my mom and she learned from my grandma. I thought that meant I was very knowlegeable about the craft." Tara grimaces. "Dawn was certainly impressed by my 'mystic lineage'. Thing is, we lived in a really remote part of Alabama. We were never part of a coven. Then when Dawnie found out I was so clueless that I genuinely believed my dad when he told me I was a demon..." Tara spreads out her hands in a helpless gesture. "She stopped listening to me."


	41. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR ALPHA: TARA**

:_**Friday, 13th October 2000**_:

That last statement was, I reflect, while dramatic, in need of expansion. "I mean, that is, she didn't take me as seriously." I amend. "Dawn got more aggressive and more reckless with the magicks. I got scared, started nagging her. THEN she stopped listening to me."

"Is Dawnie, is my sister dangerous?" asks Buffy.

I sigh. "I don't know. Maybe. She envies you, you know?"

Buffy raises her eyebrows sceptically . "What's to envy? I fight, I kill. Yeah, the vamps and demons are evil. But they hope, they dream, they feel. Heck, they can even love! And I pretty much murder them. Every night. The Slayer gig is not something to envy."

"You pity the monsters." says Willow with realisation. "You feel guilty for what you hafta do."

Buffy winces. "I didn't mean to blurt that out." She gives me a sad look."I'm sorry, Tare, but that's how it is. It's ironic, isn't it? My Slayerness gifted me with compassion and that's the use I put it to: death, pain, blood." A bleak, bitter smile darkens her features. "And Dawn has the nerve to be jealous. Of me. Really?"

I squeeze the inside of Buffy's left elbow. "Dawn just wants to feel special. But she always has been." I smile in loving recollection. "That's why I fell in love with her. She didn't need magic for that. Just her." I turn to Willow. "And that's why, sweetie, I wouldn't teach you even if I could. You're my love, my light. We're too close, your radiance is too bright. There's not enough distance for the master and student thing."

"All right." assents Willow. She sounds apprehensive. Her hazel eyes are green in the afternoon sun.

I kiss her on the lips. "Don't be frightened, Will. Be careful, pay close attention to your teacher and you'll be OK. You're not quite the idiot Dawn is." Her expression lightens. I clap my hands briskly. "So, Buffy! Where are you taking me for our date this evening?"


	42. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR BRAVO: TARA**

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_:

"A-la-la-la-la! Yeee-ah!" The rush of the early morning air chills my body as I hurtle myself through it. I land badly, sprawling awkwardly into a patch of nettles. Or maybe they're triffids. Scarlet goosebumps of pain blister my bare legs. Whimper! Note to self: even if Willow thinks you look like a hotter, blonde version of Lara Croft, next time it's sturdy jeans, not cargo shorts. Urtication ain't worth the fornication. I think vanity's best left to the expert practitioner. Speaking of whom...

Buffy and the last remaining vampire exchange looks, shaking their heads in wonder at this crazy chick. Buffy plants her hands on her hips. "Tare, were you channeling Xena?" she scolds. "I'm vexed with you, Tara, really vexed. There's a certain decorum I expect in a fellow Slayer." She makes a disdainful moue. "Trainee." says Buffy in apology to the vamp.

"Ah." The demon nods sagely as he surveys the heaps of ash that were his minions.

"What!" I yell in fury. Snarling, I hurl a stake at the vampire. Much to my surprise it's a pinpoint strike and the vampire bursts into grave dust all over Buffy. I can't help but grin hugely at my accomplishment.

Buffy splutters and coughs. "Don't get cocky, kid." She isn't smirking now.

"One," I retort, somewhat mollified by this spectacle, "I'm three months older than you. Two, I expected a proper date. Not a 'study date'. You weasel!"

"Hey!" she protests. "I'm a minx, not a weasel!"

"Mink." I correct primly.

"Whatever." she replies. "Anyways, that's the action movie part of our date over. Now for dinner."

"Buffy," I tell her with insulting patience, "I doubt there's a restaurant open now. It's past two."

"Restaurant?" Buffy looks incredulously at me. "A Slayer scoffs at such fripperies! Oh, no, we're Bronzin' it." Seeing my unhappy mien, she adds "The Bronze is traditional, Tare. Dancing, lotsa noise. But no booze 'cause we're underage. Even if we do save the world.  
A lot. Every night." Buffy flirts her eyelashes beguilingly but the wry humour in her smile is more bewitching.

"All right." I agree. "But you're paying." A beat. "Weasel."


	43. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE ALPHA: BUFFY**

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_:

When I was a kid, there'd be one particular day in the week when I'd wake up and realise something miraculous: it was Saturday and there was no school! That delight, that potential, that freedom always felt so grand. After Celia was killed I lost my grasp on that feeling. But when I was Chosen, as a sort of backhanded gift, I regained it. Every time I survive my nightly struggle, keeping bright the beacon against the blizzard of bale and darkness, I have that same sense of giddy joy, of liberation.

The music is oceanic, its pounding rhythm is surf beating rocks into pebbles and sand. I snatch Tara's hand, drag her onto the Bronze's dance floor. How I've missed sharing this! How I miss Faith! Tare and I plunge into the wave of sound. Our hearts keep time with its steady pulse as we mirror one another's dervishy gyre. A celebration of our lives, Faith's life, a wake for her life and our own.

Tara's lips look so plump, so delicious, so tender that I cannot resist sampling them. The mingled savour, of the salt of her sweat, the cinnamon of her gloss, is the sweetest thing I've ever tasted. Only Faith has ever tasted as sweet, only Willow ever shall. Abruptly, Tare becomes rigid in my arms, frowns. I loosen my embrace in dismay. She pulls me back against her body. "Dawn." she mouths to me. So, my sister is here, watching, jealously spying on us, no doubt. O...K...Let's give the canary something to sing about. I kiss Tara once more. Tattle your tales, Dawnie!


	44. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE BRAVO: BUFFY**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

After an eternity of wet, smoochy bliss, Tare pushes me away. But gently, mind. She keeps a good grip on my arms as I gaze into her eyes. I see kindness, affection and lustful glints in their ultramarine depths. I watch, fascinated, as her slow smile unfolds like the petals of a flower at sunrise. First the left corner of her mouth arcs up into that cute half-smile, next a full-blown, crooked, impish grin with the points of her top teeth peeking out. Her crinkled eyes flicker sidelong towards the exit. She laughs, amused and playful. Suddenly, like a March Hare, in one bound Tara's off the dance floor, sprinting out of the Bronze. Surprise delays me, then I launch in quest of her. As I run, I see, at the edge of vision, Dawn all a-rage with bafflement.

It's merry sport under a full moon, playing kiss-chase with Tare through the dark hours of the morning. Only one obstacle. Of all outlandish things, a mugger. I literally growl at him and he flees. Not totally suicidal, then. Eventually, I bring Tara to bay outside her dorm room.

"Home again, home again. Jiggety-jig." Tare sing-songs.

I leer at her, reaching for the full curves of her bosom. "Oh, yeah. Jiggety-jig."

Giggling, she slaps my hand from its quarry, unlocks the door. Within, I see candlelight, pale skin, red hair. "Willow?" Tara murmurs, astonished. My breath catches. Willow is waiting. Naked Willow. Very naked Willow. Exponentially prefixy naked Willow. Now could this be any more awkward? Or any more welcome?


	45. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE CHARLIE: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHARLIE: BUFFY**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

The whole time since the Bronze has felt dreamlike. The transition to the bed will be, mostly, forever beyond thought and memory. Just brief snapshots in a kaleidoscopic collage: my surprise that Willow has so few freckles on her milky body; Tara stopping me from bolting; Will's tongue tickling the roof of my mouth; Tare pinching my nipples into painful pleasance; the moist folds of my sex anointing Willow's exploring fingers with my essence. I'm glad Tara is with us. Her presence is welcome, comforting, rightful. Though I'm not in love with her. Not yet, anyways, but she's in my heart. My focus is on my sweet Wills, my Willow. On the warm, wet, thrilling strokes as she laps at my core, an orange cat supping on the daintiest flesh. With the aid of Will's diligent devotion I soon reach my peak. I can't describe my orgasm with any precision. Metaphors barely suffice. It's a fiery comet plunging into an ocean, tsunamis of pleasure rippling outward from the impact. It's a lightning bolt striking my centre, ecstatic electricity flowing along my spine. It's-

"WILLOW!"

As I reach the zenith of climax, my back arches like a bow and I soar upwards, an erotic arrow blazing a trail to...

Somewhere else. A garden. My senses are sharper, my mind is keener. I lie on my back. I see a woman. Pale green skin, snow-coloured hair, eyes whose colour is in flux: solid white, black on white, solid black, white on black, repeat. I raise myself up on my elbows and see the rest of her. From the waist down an emerald green serpent's tail tipped with a rattle. She's lovely. I don't think I'm in a mundane state of consciousness anymore. Damn! Willow is good!

**A/N: If you would like to see the ********Character Stats: for Lovers, Slayers And Witches, base on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game** please check out my author's profile.


	46. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE DELTA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE DELTA: BUFFY**

**A/N:**_ A quote from the Season Eight Comics (arc: "Last Gleaming" by Joss Whedon and Scott Allie) is used here._

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"Hi there, snakey demon hottie!" I say brightly, giving Snake Lady an airy, little wave.

"Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer." she states. Her voice is husky, kind of a deep contralto with a hint of a trilling purr beneath. I expected something more hissy.

"What is this?" I demand. "An episode of 'Cheers'? Everyone knows my name. First Dracula, and now you, whoever you are."

"I am Aluwyn, Saga Vasuki." She sidewinds her way towards me, her eyes scanning naked me in appraisal. I fail to suppress my blush.

"And you sound all disappointy." I pout at her. "I'm disconsolate. Waiting for someone else, maybe?" And oddly, I am actually miffed. Why is vanity and self-loathing so twisted together in me?

"I was expecting either you, Tara Maclay or Willow." There's this sad inflection in Aluwyn's tone when she says Will's name.

My memory flashes back to the dying nun who told me of The Seed, the pendant I took from her. Tree and serpent, Willow and-

"You!" I exclaim. Rage and awe shock and thrill me."You created Willow. Put The Seed thingy in her." I glare at Aluwyn. "Should I kill you for screwing up my life or thank you for the wonderful gift?"

She smiles lovingly. "Willow is wondrous, is she not? I always thought so."

My brain is certainly on the ball today. "Willow wasn't just made up, was she? Somewhere, somewhen she was real."

"It's somewhen." says Aluwyn. She pauses. Her gaze lingers on my breasts. "I altered time."


	47. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE ECHO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE ECHO: BUFFY**

**A/N:** _A quote from the comic "Goddesses And Monsters" by Joss Whedon is used here._

**A/N:** I'm _not entirely happy with this chapter. I hate writing exposition _:(

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"Huh? What? How? Why? Hamnoo?" I splutter in utter astonishment. "Get explainy!"

"I'll be as direct as my nature, and few remaining choices, allow." Aluwyn replies.

"Nature?" I ask. "Are you like a scorpion? You gotta sting people?"

"I always lie." she tells me.

"Oh... Kay..." Buffy brain comes back into play, despite the distraction of Aluwyn's seductive coils. "But that would mean that was a fib which means that was the truth which means- I'm no good with the Zen Conan thing. Why don't I just shove your tail down your throat, Wynnie?"

Aluwyn laughs and sounds her rattle. Does she have multispeed vibration on that, I wonder? "Well said!" She flows into a slow loop-the-loop around me. "I run in circles, the snake that eats its tail. I'm an ouroboros."

"Point taken." I concede. Aluwyn's tale will unwind as it will. Tricksters! They're incorrigible. "Explain as you can."

"I'm a child of Lilith. Mother despises the sons of Adam, and hates women even more. Unlike her, I enjoy the company, the touch of women. For that, Lilith cursed me. So, ever were I to fall in love- not a crush, mind you, real love- with a daughter of Eve..."

"All that isn't literally true, is it?" I realise. "It's all alligator-y."

"Allegory." corrects Aluwyn. Her voice is amused.

"Whatever. Call me Mrs. Maladroit. But I get it. You fell in love with Willow."

"And she with me." Aluwyn adds. I think on how the mechanics of that would have worked. The idea of Will and Aluwyn together doesn't repulse me. It's actually kinda hot...

"And doomed yourself." I conclude sadly.


	48. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE FOXTROT: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE FOXTROT: BUFFY **

**A/N:**_ A quote from the Firefly episode, "Objects In Space" by Joss Whedon, is used here._

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"Indeed." confirms Aluwyn. She's now barely close enough for my fingertips to touch her face, stroke her hair. I wonder if her tresses are as soft as Willow's, her flesh as warm. "But love falls as it shall. It could have been any woman. It could have been Tara, had she not died. Even you, had you not been Chosen."

At Aluwyn speaking of Tare's death, I feel pain: my heart clenches, my nails gouge my palms, tears track down my face. I recall Will's stammered, sobbing story of seeing Tara's death through Tara's eyes. Gunshots, the shattering shrapnel of the window, the wet sound of her bursting heart, blood splashing on Willow's face...

"Those visions!" I wail. "You coulda just told us how it went down. What would've been, before you meddled. Why hurt us that way?" My hands and feet hunger for violence.

"You would understand." Aluwyn retorts. "But not comprehend. I want you to KNOW." She spirals away from me in frustrated curves. "Those visions will continue. You NEED that knowledge. All three of you do. And I couldn't stop the dreams now, even if I wished to do so."

Giles recently taught me a calming mantra. I use it. "What did you mean, if I hadn't been Chosen?"

Aluwyn twists her body, and her gaze, towards me. "All girls who bear the Slayer potential are also actual or latent witches. None younger than fourteen are Called, none older than twenty-one. If Nikki Woods, India Cohen, any of your predecessors had lived that bit longer..."

"I would have been a witch." I muse. The thought of me bippity-boppity-booing makes me smile. A ridiculous notion!

"Any given Slayer" says Aluwyn. "Is as great a warrior as the witch she could have become." She scowls at me. "Do not underestimate yourself!"


	49. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE GOLF: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE GOLF: BUFFY**

:_Saturday, 14th October 2000_:

"How powerful a witch would I have been?" I ask, a-smirk with casual curiosity. Too casual, too amused. Careless.

Aluwyn corkscrews her tail into a spring, pounces. Her body has me netted in her coils before I can react, her face inches from my nose. I catch her scent: saffron, attar, musk. I cannot move. Her rattle threatens a harsh warning. "As fully dangerous a witch as Willow was in the original timeline." she growls. "She nearly destroyed your world. The peril you hold is not diminished by your being the Slayer."

I'm shaken and aghast. Aluwyn was swifter than a viper! My Wills went all apocalypsy? And I, too, am that much of a threat? "I'm sorry." I apologise, my eyes downcast. "I didn't know a Slayer could destroy a world." I, I can destroy the world! "And... and you're not tame. Nor safe. Not at all." And neither am I; I'd forgotten that. Aluwyn certainly hasn't.

She releases me. "Wise. And in answer to your unspoken question, a Slayer not only could, but has."

I know better than to press Aluwyn on that point. "I'll listen. Tell me what you will tell me."

"There's an entity called the Wellspring. It's omnipotent and invulnerable. Also, mindless, without volition." Aluwyn slides back and forth, shadowing her own course, a serpentine concertina. "Lacking those attributes, it's apt for abuse by the desperate and the foolish. For as long as its current master can sustain its appetite, it can effect any conceivable end."

"What does it eat?" I ask.

"The choices of its user." She answers quietly.


	50. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE HOTEL: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE HOTEL: BUFFY**

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"Are you? Are you telling me this Well-thingy is God?" I blurt out to Aluwyn. The thought chills me. I distract myself, my eyes tracing the dark, leopardy markings on her pale breasts.

"Bite your tongue, Slayer!" snaps Aluwyn. "I sincerely hope not! No. It's perhaps a blunt saw, a bent chisel, a broken hammer. But the Creator itself? I shouldn't think so." Huh, it would explain a few things, though, I think with a wry grimace.

"You said earlier about your few remaining choices?" I prompt.

"Choices? Maybe I should have said, rather, future possibilities. There's no exact way of putting it." she reflects.

"But it's of the bad, what the Wellspring has cost you?"

"Oh, yes. When the last, remaining drop of my life's potential is gone, my destiny will be fixed in amber. I'll be an automaton, a self-aware cog trapped in the machinery of fate." Aluwyn sighs. "I understood what I was getting into but..."

"You didn't comprehend." I feel... nausea. If what I've just reckoned is true, she will become like a character in a DVD on repeat. Unable to change the plot, but knowing, feeling, living. And whatever the genre; it's gonna be a horror flick. "Is it worth it? Truly worth it?"

"It's for my Willow." Aluwyn tells me. "My darling Willow."

"For our Willow." I reach out to take her into my arms. She deserves, demands, has more than earned, whatever inadequate comfort I can give.


	51. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE INDIA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE INDIA: BUFFY**

**A/N: **_Warning: character death! This one's for you, Wispr. _**;)**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"Wait!" Aluwyn commands.

I freeze, withdraw in a babble of chagrined confusion. "Oh! I didn't... I mean... Not Willow... I know I'm not Will... That's who you want... To see, that is-"

She silences me with a gentle touch, fingers to lips. "Buffy, I don't think you presumptuous. True, I'd hoped for Willow. But I can sense her auric traces, her mystical scent, on your astral body." Encircling me, Aluwyn eyes me flirtatiously. "I won't refuse you, you please me. Kennedy, you are not! But business first."

"Who's this Kennedy guy?" I ask curiously.

"A Slayer. Not someone you, and Willow, need ever worry about." Her face becomes inscrutable and remote. "There was... an unfortunate series of events: drunkenness, a vacuum cleaner, the blow setting, an embolism."

"Yikes!" I glance nervously at Aluwyn's enigmatic expression and decide to ask some other question. "You changed history. That's all butterflies, chaos and stuff. How different is original Buffy?"

She points at a nearby pool of water. Large, scarlet and pink blooms, with intricate folds, float on its surface. Tall, slim trees surround it, lunging at the sky. Suddenly, I want to dive into that pool, and drown my face in the blossoms. I want to climb those trees, and scrape my palms on their bark.

"This place isn't real real-" I glimpse Aluwyn's frown, correct myself. Oh, she's got me well-trained. Good girl, Buffy! Where's my Scooby snack? "Um, not vanilla, astral real. It's funhouse mirror, astral real. It's all a crocodile."

Aluwyn nods in approval. "This whole realm runs on metaphor. It's resonance is self-knowledge."

"And I'm definitely bi." I say, as I regard the Freudian clue by four. I turn back to her. "Very deep, very insighty. But tell me, what does all this," I jab my thumb towards the pond, "Have to do with the price of Manolo Blahniks?"


	52. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE JULIET: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE JULIET: BUFFY**

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Aluwyn sniffs haughtily. "Best you ask your subconscious that. I, just wanted a pool of water, without the vegetation." She looks at me through kohl-darkened eyelashes, then adds drily: "Though, as it happens, despite enjoying the odd, furtive, lesbian dalliance, the original Buffy was firmly wedded to the myth of her own heterosexual nature. She was far too stubborn to have admitted otherwise."

Golly! I guess that would make quite the difference. "OK, my bad. Show and tell, lamia gal!"

The pond is now free of its flowery clutter. I've never seen water so still, or my reflection so perfectly captured. I jump as my image explodes into spray, waves radiating from the ground zero of the splash. I yelp. Aluwyn quells me with a glance, her left hand upheld to demand patience. When, at last, the surface of the pool regains its glassy quality, she knots her tail around a tree, rears up on her snaky abdomen, and leans far over the pond's bank. Then, as she almost touches the water, she slowly, gently, carefully inserts a pebble into the liquid. I can see, barely, the stone's wake as it slips under.

"Well?" Aluwyn, now fully back on land, has her arms folded, an eyebrow raised, the end of her tail twitching like a cat's. She's not like Giles, not fooled by my playing the fool. Here in topsy-turvy land, I'm expected to make with the exposition. "It's an anchovy, a pretty clear one. You can be clumsy, turn history into a fubar. Or, you can be all finessy, get mostly what you want. Either way, you break too many eggs for your omelette."

"You do have a uniquely concise way of putting things, Buffy." says Aluwyn admiringly. "Those are exactly the points my analogy was meant to illuminate."

"My brain isn't designed to think." I complain. "Couldn't you- Ow!" Aluwyn has pinched my nose hard, hard enough to bleed. Oh, boy! Does she look pissed!


	53. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE KILO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE KILO: BUFFY**

A/N: Some dialogue from the comic "Goddesses And Monsters" by Joss Whedon is adapted here.****

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Aluwyn speaks, her voice as cold as frost, as brittle as ice. "This is your third and last warning." Her serpent's body writhes in rage, braiding and unbraiding itself. "Thrice is the charm."

"Sorry, beg pardon?" I've puzzlement enough, for a jigsaw convention.

"Oh, you'll be sorry, if you keep this up!" she promises grimly." She begins to circle me in slow, deliberate orbits. "I know the value of tactical dissembling; but it's one thing to act the simpleton, quite another to be wilfully obtuse."

I sigh wearily. "Look, Aluwyn, you've got info I need. There's no time for Batman and Riddler fun." My timbre turns to a desperate snarl. "Willow's life is on the line here! Just fucking tell me!"

"Remember what I told you?" she asks. "I do enjoy being tricksy, shifty and unreliable. Which, in truth, is just as well, because I MUST manifest those traits."

"And your point is?" I watch Aluwyn's gyrations stonily.

She says gently: "I can spoonfeed you, child, tie up the loose ends of my discourse." Abruptly, she becomes utterly immobile. It's the most reptilian thing I've seen her do, so far.

"But?" There's ALWAYS a but.

"I must do what I must do." she answers.

"OK." What choice do I have?

Aluwyn looks intently at me. Her eyes, fractal patterns of light and dark."You're putting yourself in my hands?"

"I thought we agreed earlier, that it would come to that." I joke. She ignores this, keeping her uncomforting gaze on me, still and silent. It makes me fidget. "Yes! I'll put myself in your hands. Get with the grabbiness, already!"

"Very well." Aluwyn announces. "A change of plans it is, then." She spits into her hand, offers it for me to shake.

"Wanna pinky swear, too?" I ask sarcastically, hawking a mega-gob of saliva into my palm, clinching the deal. I just know I'm gonna regret this.


	54. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE LIMA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE LIMA: BUFFY**

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Without preamble, prevarication or pity, Aluwyn tells me what I must know. Everything she's decided I need to know. After what is just a mere moment of quiet, to me, an anguished aeon of horrified silence, I burst out: "How, how can I do this? It's all too much for me! I-"

"I, I, I, me, me, me." sneers Aluwyn. "My burden, my misery, my pain. You've nurtured, and indulged, your pride and self-hatred for too long. You cannot deny it!"

My first, angry impulse is to smash her skull to splinters with my naked fists, to tear off ribbons of skin with my blunt teeth. She's right though; I can't deny it. "I'd love to say you're wrong, I really would." I confess ruefully. "But you've called it."

"You will not be alone in this." she assures me. "Willow and Tara can be trusted absolutely." She then demurs. "Or at least, as absolutely as frail mortals can be."

"So, you'll be wanting your pound of flesh, then?" I ask.

Aluwyn blinks. "Ah, yes. Now to exact my portion from our bargain." Her arms draw me into her embrace. Her coils weave a warm tapestry of sensation, as they trace complex patterns of pleasure on my thighs and belly. She kisses me. My lips tingle from the alchemy of her tongue. Her hands on my breasts elicit electric shudders. Poisonous delirium! Venomous ecstasy! Then, just beneath the ribs on my right side, there is tearing, wrenching, gutting agony. I fall.

Above my supine body, Aluwyn is cradling a bloody, human liver in her hands. My liver. Her expression is odd. There are many things I might have looked for in her face: malice and hatred, triumph and delight. It's none of these. Could it be... relief? Sorrow? She smiles tenderly at me. I feel the tug of the world as it pulls me from her realm. "The moon sets in Sunnydale. We shall continue our tryst anon. Fare you well, sweet Buffy! And forgive me."


	55. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX ALPHA: WILLOW**

**A/N: **_Just some Willow/Tara fluff. Also, an anachronistic reference to "The L-Word" which didn't, in fact, debut until 2004._

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"WILLOW!"

As she cries out my name, Buffy's pelvis pushes upwards, and I'm somersaulted away, boobs over butt. Willow Airlines Flight Orgasm crashes into the dresser, a spazzy, ungainly muddle.

Tara scoots over to the foot of the bed, distracted from her attentions to Buff's nipples. At least, that's what I think she was doing; I WAS kinda busy. There's concern in Tara's face, merriment in her eyes, as she views the disaster zone. "Are you OK, sweetie?"

"Just bruised, maybe some whiplash.". I then grin hugely, and not a little smugly. "My ego though?" I nod towards blissed out Buffy. "That's good, it's Goody McGood!"

"Vixen!" laughs Tara.

I get off the floor, my right knee twinging, limp over to the bed. Running my finger over Buffy's nose and lips, I see her looking so small, so fragile, so peaceful, so drooly- "Has she passed out?" I ask, a little awestruck. 'Cause, that's never happened before. Like ever.

Tara tickles Buff's toes. No chortle response. "Yep! You made her cum 'til her brains dripped out her ears."

"Tara!" I yelp, half-shocked, half-amused, half-wanna-jump-your-bones-right-now-missy. Yeah, my math sucks! But who'd be coherent at a time like this? Buffy in amazing, happy moment land, Tara's boobies all a-wiggle, as she giggles at me. "Ew! Runny grey matter so not a nice visual. Sassy Slayer!"

"The spicy talk?" She covers Buffy over with the comforter, kisses her forehead. "These days, much easier. Lots easier."

"There's one word you've not used, yet." Wow! I really knocked Buff's socks off. And her first time, too, in a dykewise sense. Or is it her second? Does dream sex with Faith count?

"And what word is that, my love?" Tara coos, her voice bringing me back from babblespace.

I'm too bashful to actually say it. "You know."

Tara pulls me against her so I'm straddling her hips, her hot breath on my neck making me shiver with need. "Could it be... this word?" she purrs huskily, then whispers into my ear.

"Oh, yeah, baby!" I flush with arousal, my blood supply having far, far better things to do, than attend to higher cognitive functions. My puss is a total puddle. "Lick my um, you-know, a thousand times, huh? Prove it!"


	56. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX BRAVO: WILLOW**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

I'm out-of-breathy, heart poundy, afterglowy. I watch Tara. Ya know, her ears are too big and stick out too far. Her nose is too long, too broad at its base. Her mouth is overlarge, her lips are too full. Her cheekbones are too askew. That sounds unkind, bitchy, spiteful, but there's a whole collection of just a bits, slightlies and ever sos to go along with all that, softening the harsh verdict. Tara is beautiful. When she returned with Buffy earlier, there were scratches on Tara's bare legs, bruises on her arms, her Ramones T-shirt was torn, there was dried blood on her Doc Martens, dirt on her face. Even this unkempt, Tara was beautiful. And I don't get why.

When I was fourteen, and first came out to myself, I'd spend hours on the computer, distilling the hottest features from the cutest girls on the planet, into the ideal woman. I wish I could say I was Pygmalion in his studio, sculpting Galatea from finest marble. But I was more like Frankenstein in his lab, splicing his creature from the miscellany of the tomb. The software was kinda crude back then. In time, it got better, but the results remained pretty gross. Over the years, virtual patchwork monsters evolved into digital plastic mannequins, still denizens of Uncanny Valley. I recognise beauty when I see it but I've never found the right equation, the perfect algorithm, to describe it. Aesthetics is beyond my ability to analyse. I just don't get it.

"Busy in there, sweetie?" asks Tara, making me jump. "I can hear the clatter of tiny cogs."

"Hey!" I protest. "There's only the squelchiest, sparkiest neurons here, baby. No difference engine in this noggin."

"Well, your mind is certainly different." she jokes. "So what were you thinking?"

I reach out and let my fingers explore her face. "About the hotness of you, my love." Tara's mouth explodes into her most radiant smile, making the butterflies do a happy jig in my tummy. Beautiful.


	57. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX CHARLIE: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHARLIE: WILLOW**

**:Saturday, 14th October 2000:**

Tara has changed. When Dawn first introduced her to the Scoobies, her voice stuttered and stammered, the muscles in her face would tic and twitch. Her eyes would slide away from our gaze or hide under her hair. I thought all that was cute. Once I realised that her shy mannerisms were actually scars, emotional scars, they no longer seemed so sweet, so endearing. The deep ferocity of the resulting rage had surprised me. Frightened me. I'd wanted to skin her father and brother, then roll them in the sharpest, scratchiest salt crystals. Better yet, use a supersoaker, or just a water pistol even, to squirt them with hydrofluoric acid. In high concentrations that stuff can eat glass. In low concentrations it's a contact poison, seeping through the skin down to the marrow. It would be hours before they'd know something was wrong, and likely it would be too late. Among the fun highlights: the bones dissolving to slush, blood and fat rotting into mush, corrosive molecules tearing holes in the gut, agony and nausea. A slow, terrifying death. Chemistry is pretty keen, huh?

I had wanted to protect Tara, kill anyone who harmed her. I still do. If I can think such horrid thoughts, have these fantasies of monstrous revenge, become a sort of PMS-y Darth Vader, how can I, in all conscience, learn magic? Be trusted with it? And it's not just Tara now, there's Buffy too. If the one died, the other, with her love, could anchor me to life and sanity. But if both died, and I knew enough magicks to be dangerous? Goddess help the world!


	58. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN ALPHA: TARA**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

I barely repress a shudder as a feral snarl suddenly twists at Willow's face. Her angry grimace dims quickly into apprehension. Predator becoming prey, fox into rabbit. I want to hug her, she so needs a hug. And a tummy rub. But as a comatose Buffy is lying between us, I settle for reaching over and grasping Willow's hand. "Will? Sweetie? What's wrong?"

She smiles wanly. "That's one of the many, many things I love about you, Tara. You're such a worrywart."

"You're a witch now." I grin at her. "And all witches should have at least one unsightly papilloma. It's in their employment contract."

Willow chuckles, her eyes regain some sparkle. "None of that now, Miss Maclay! You're one wart I don't mind sportin'."

"No sport, sweetie. We'd wake up Buffy for sure this time." I lip at Will's fingers. The taste of my juices still lingers on them. She inhales sharply. Since becoming Chosen, I've gotten a better intuition for her needs. No, that's not right, I've always known what she's needed. It's simply that my bedtime, funtime timidity has now gone, and that lack of diffidence makes all the difference. I gaze at Willow with eyebrow raised. Wait for her to start divulging.

"Dawn's setting up to be a mega-poophead." she declares bluntly. "I think it's 'cause of bad synergy. Jealousy and re-unrequited love, plus all that dark mojo? It's eating and gnawing away inside her. I love you, Tara, I love you so much. I'm not large with the butch, but I'd kill to keep you. Keep you safe, I mean. And that's how I feel WITHOUT the magicks." Willow looks at me in fretful frustration. "I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here. Likely not, being Babble Girl. I just don't wanna be like Dawn, fall into deep black. Do you get it at all, baby?"

I nod. "I get it." I really wish I didn't, but I do.


	59. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN BRAVO: TARA**

**A/N:** _Dialogue_ _from the Season Eight comics (arc: "Time Of Your Life" by Joss Whedon) is adapted here_.

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Willow is right to be concerned about the magicks, about how she could abuse them, how they could use her. Concerned? That's an understatement! In truth, she is deeply, deeply afraid, and no wonder. She saw the aftermath of my death through the eyes of my ghost, saw her own fury and despair. Even though it was but a dream, even at such a remove; when she awoke from nightmare to reality, she awakened to magic, energised and terrorised by dark sorcery.

"Willow." I cradle her face in my hands. She cannot escape my intense regard. "Tell me! Do you feel this way about Buffy too?"

"You mean the whole stereotypy, Mad Bad Dangerous Lesbian thing?" she says glumly. "Yep. Not good, huh? 'Cause, if one of you goes, my heart gets ripped out. Both of you? I lose my soul."

"Oh, sweetie-" I begin.

"And the kicker?" Will interjects. "Dawn is like that about you AND Oz."

"Whoa! that's... complicated." To say the least.

"Uh-huh." she agrees. "You know the one I really feel sorry for? Oz. He's good people." A contemplative pause. "Hope Dawn's been looking out for him, it's that werewolfy time of the month again."

"Isaac Bonewits says in 'Authentic Thaumaturgy' that one of the keys to true mastery is self-knowledge." I wince at my phrasing. That was sententious! True, though.

Willow gives me a sardonic glance. "Well, thank you, Pollyanna Maclay." she says acidly. Her expression becomes very solemn as she grips my upper arms, hard. "Tara baby, do you trust me, and know that I love you, and I'm not a crazy person, and that the promise I want from you is for the greater good, cross your heart, no backsies?"

Now there's a parseworthy bit of babble. What promise? "I trust you, I know you love me, I don't think you're crazy, and you have my oath." I cross my heart, keep my fingers in plain sight. "And hope to die."


	60. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN CHARLIE: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHARLIE: TARA**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

"So what dreadful deed have I just promised to do?" I ask Willow. "Because if it's to get a henna tattoo, or a spice rack, you're way, way out of luck, sweetie."

My weak attempt to lighten the mood fails to elicit even the feeblest smile, nary the tiniest quirk from the corner of Will's expressively mobile mouth. Instead, there's a misbegetting silence, disquiet gestating in the stillness, until finally: "To kill me."

"Wh-what! Wh-why?" I goggle at Willow. And that damn stutter, which I thought the Slayer essence had exiled forever, steals back into my speech.

"I always tell things wrong." She sighs."OK, it's 'cause I don't think Buffy has the chops to do it herself." A sharp change of tack. "Dawnie told you about Angel's soul clause, yeah?"

Sometimes, Luxemburg, I wish you'd advance directly to Go. All your tangents have tangents; they make me dizzy. After an epic scrap with Tara Interior Ministry troops, my stammer is recaptured, sent back to Kamchatka. "I know he lost his soul but she was kinda vague about the how. Or why he had one in the first place. I mean, come on, vampire!"

"It's a... long story. Anyways, to package it in a handy and nutritious, bite-sized snack, the vampire Angelus killed the wrong person, and got himself cursed. With a soul, no less."

"This would be the soul of the guy who got turned into the vamp originally, right?"

Willow nods in assent. "He was called Liam."

"So did Liam agree to become a vampire? Is that why..." That would be the only slim justification for commiting such an act. And even then, the morality of doing so is... dubious, makes me feel sick to the heart.

"Dunno. Wouldn't have thought so, myself. The people who cursed him, though? I believe they neither knew nor cared. Vengeance ain't about justice, it's all about the pain. Someone has to suffer, guilty or not." Will scowls. "Oh, and there's worse."

"W-worse?" Oh, Goddess! I'm not gonna like this.


	61. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT ALPHA: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT ALPHA: WILLOW**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Tara's out of bed and has begun prowling the room, a restless lioness. She's got a severe case of the frownies, pale with anger and disgust, her mouth pursed into a lipless slit, her brow deeply corrugated, her eyes narrowed into stormy grey. Tara has always had steel in her spine, but now that the rust's been scoured away, now that she's been reforged, I can see its deadly glitter. She stops pacing and looks into my eyes. Her gaze is remote, impassive, regal. Isn't there that fable from Aesop where the Fox is counsellor to the Lion? And he comes to a bad end? But I'm not Reynard, Buffy is, even if my fur is red. I'm the Mouse in this story.

Tara's focus on me falters. She hisses in agony, lips twisting, as she clutches at her right side. Buffy mewls and whimpers in her sleep. Tara's got a groggy liver which brings her pain when she's upset. After her mother died, she went on a misery-drownin', memory-dimmin', moonshine-drinkin' Bacchanalia, followed by massive alcohol poisoning. Our serene Tara as a boozy maenad is kinda hard to imagine, huh?

Tara shakes off her liver pangs, directs her attention back onto me. Her voice is musing and quiet. "Most curses wear away in a generation or two. But if they come with an attached condition? They can last centuries. Just what you need for a vamp." She tilts her head reflectively. "What was the curse-breaker, Will?"

"One moment of pure happiness." I answer. "Isn't that screwed up?"

"It makes too much sense, actually." Tara remarks. "A guilt-ridden soul ain't gonna be a happy bunny." She looks sidelong back at the bed. "Buffy was dating Angel back then, wasn't she? Do you think she...?"

"No." says Buffy, startling us, awake and sitting up, her eyes hazy-glazy. "I didn't, though everyone thinks I did. I've never denied it." A breath and a heartbeat. "Until now."


	62. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT BRAVO: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT BRAVO: WILLOW**

**A/N: _Tara's invovation is taken from the Season Eight comics (arc: "Last Gleaming" by Joss Whedon and Scott Allie)._**

**:_Saturday, 14th October 2000_:**

Buffy has the most adorable bed hair, an absolute schemozzle of tousled tufts and chaotic cowlicks. "Is, is the moon setting?" she asks. What an odd question!

Tara opens the drapes. The upper limb of the moon is still above the rooftops of UCSD, but Luna's definitely handing off her shift to the sun. Guess that's a big, ole yes to Buffy's inquiry.

Argent light bathes and caresses Tara's face. She shudders. No, it's a sob, her eyes big, pregnant with moonsilver tears. She begins to chant. There's such joyful devotion, such radiant love in her voice, that it makes me tingle all over, raises the hairs on the back of my neck, gives me goosebumps. Buffy and I will only ever receive the teeniest tithe of what Tara is gifting to the Mother. I don't know exactly how I feel about that, but the love I do get from Tara is sometimes more than I can bear gracefully, is often beyond my emotional endurance. I should complain! It's a sweet burden, the best burden.

"Awake in peace! Your eyes that dart the rays of the sun, whose divine power is great on the head of the Goddess! Your heart that is the beat of life, that gives life to all! The Queen of Earth, undying- the Regent in the West and the East, the Divine Mother who ascends to the throne- let your sworn protector stand against your enemies - keeping evil from those who are faithful to you."

Tara finishes her hymn of praise. Buffy looks me curiously in the eye. "Thought I saw a touch of redeye there, Will. Didn't think moonlight could do that."

I ignore her. A silly remark from a silly Slayer. "That was... so beautiful, baby." I murmur to Tara. My heart is overfilled, so bloated with affection and ecstasy and love, that it could pop like a tick.


	63. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT CHARLIE: WILLOW

**CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHARLIE: WILLOW**

**A/N: **_Not my greatest chapter ever, but I have been suffering from writer's block for the past month_.

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Buffy looks at Tara in bemusement. "God, Tare, I only wanted to know if the fricking moon had set!" Buff's voice is definitely amused despite her puzzled expression.

"We used to get up, Momma and I, when the moon went down," Tara explains, "So we could see the sun come up. We always used to incant that together."

"I... I've never heard you do that before." I feel kinda hurt.

"Not since my mom died." she says sorrowfully. "It's yours now, Willow, that invocation. It's a witchy thing. Been handed down, mother to daughter, for... I don't know how long. Anyhow, when, one day, you have a little girl of your own..."

My eyes are bitter wells of sweet tears. It's a precious gift she's just given me. "Oh, baby."

She continues. "Oh, and my spell books, the candles, the herbs and the doll's eye crystal from my granny? They're yours now, too. Don't need them no more. I'll give 'em to you soon as you get started on a proper, magical ejumacation." Tara's mouth unwraps into that crooked smile of hers. I go to her and give her my squeeziest hugs, my nummiest kisses.

I grin back at Buffy. "Well now, how was your intro to the wonderful world of naked kissage and gay love?"

Buffy's answering smile is like a flickering flame. There's a slight frowniness dimming her green eyes. She's edgy and unhappy "Hey." I say, gentling her, consoling her with a soothing tone. Call me Willow the Buffy Whisperer. "Are you skittish? Are you from Skitland where they drink skitch?"

She chuckles half-heartedly. "What we did was..." she pauses. "It was the best thing..." Another pause. "Wow." she says finally.

Tara and I return home to our bed. We enwomb Buffy in the crib of our conjoined arms, and wait for her to speak, to tell us what is making the sky fall for her this time.


	64. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE ALPHA: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE ALPHA: TARA**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

I suddenly feel this sad, aching hunger, a dislocated hollowness deep inside me, a broken connection. Is it the loss of my magicks? That's certainly logical, the most obvious answer. Is it the right one though? At some level, I grieve for my witchiness and always shall. But, you know, I could never take much joy in it. Having magic was a wonderful privilege and... That's just it, it wasn't only a privilege but a dangerous burden. Momma and Granny made darn sure I understood that. It had to be treated with respect, with caution. How they nagged! How they lectured! It was somehow worse than the haranguings and beatings I got from Dad and brother Donnie. Momma's and Granny's love for me was tainted by fear. Dad and Donnie's fear of me was rotten with envy. Among our cosy, little clan of double cousin marryin' types, magic rushes strongly through our blood. Somehow, Dad and Donnie, and let's not forget Cousin Beth, missed out on it. Gawd, how they hated that! And me. I became a harshly schooled, angry, little girl gagging and choking on my rage. Keeping it silent and spayed, safe from the touch of magic.

Thanks to Giles, I know now that I was a very powerful witch, that the Chosen One needs such puissance to endure the Slayer essence. That mighty mojo scared my kinfolk so bad that I could never delight in the magicks. Until I met Dawn. And what a disaster that turned out to be! See, it's really hard for me to be nice and... Nice! That's the general Scooby consensus about me. Oh, yeah, and they think I'm kinda dorky in a weird way. But as poor Dawnie discovered, I'm really passive aggressive too.

I will miss being part of that long line of witches and wizards and I'm still proud of that. Willow can carry on the legacy now, especially the distaff side, which pleases me. But I'm also relieved, freed from an irksome responsibility, yet anxious, bound to an awesome duty. What kind of Slayer will I be?


	65. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE BRAVO: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE BRAVO: TARA**

**A/N: **_Got a cold so chapter's of mediocre quality. Sorry._

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

The chirpy sound of Buffy's voice jerks me from my reverie. Hmm, is that a Slayer trait, I wonder, this new self-absorption of mine? It's an odd thing but I figure Buffy is less against spilling her soul on her arm than she lets on. However, her pride, or perhaps convention, demands at least some ceremonial posturing before verbally disrobing. This coy virginality seems to extend to everything she does. Her mom's influence, I suspect, or perhaps the baleful pressure of bad peers. Don't give in too soon, don't seem too easy, be a good girl, be a good... You get the idea.

And here's the first step of Buffy's ritual, little dance. The teaser-appetiser before the actual meat of revelation. "Willow, how did ya know to wait for both Tare and me?" Now that's a good question! It did seem very prescient of Will, to nakedly await her conquering heroes, to welcome us home with hugs and touches, lips and tongue, hands and fingers.

Willow gifts us with one of her adorably absurd smiles, the flexible corners of her mouth a-crinkle with cuteness. "I didn't. I mean, I was waiting just for Tara." She traces a ticklish circle on my forearm. "Buff's kind of a bitch about being top dog, ya know? So even if she weren't averse to your charms, I guessed she wouldn't take that kindly to being ordered out on a date. I reckoned she'd stretch the definition of a tryst until it was sad... And I was right! You arrived, completely dishy-shevelled. But you weren't alone, and that was unexpected." Will lunges at Buffy's shoulder, pinches it, evokes a yelp. "I know your moves, Slayer! I hadta improvise 'cause you'da been out of that door, and well..." Buffy grins a shy, sheepish smile. She can't dispute Will's assessment of the situation. "So did I call it right, lover? You don't seem too big with the yippee-skippee."

"Oh, there's yip and skip, kitten." replies Buffy. "But..."

"Angel, of course." Willow sighs sadly, a hint of resigned bitterness in her suspiration. "It's always Angel. Tell us. Tara and I, we're both here for you."


	66. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE CHARLIE: TARA

**CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHARLIE: TARA**

**A/N: **_Buffy's 17th birthday went a bit differently in this AU's Season Two._

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

I watch Buffy as she closes her eyes for a few moments, girds her emotional loins. Girding one's loins, what an odd phrase! What is that exactly, and can girls actually do it? Stop woolgathering, Tara! Buffy's begun.

"That day, my birthday, my seventeenth... It started with this wigginsy dream... Drusilla killing Angel." Buffy gets up, fetches a water from the fridge, drinks it in ravenous gulps. "Soon as I woke up, I headed out to his apartment." She throws the empty bottle in the trash, grabs herself a juice, kicks the fridge shut. "He was... fine." Slow, thoughtful sips. "I was still freaked though. Reassurance was given, with much smoochiness." She snatches cheese and crackers from a cupboard, takes quick, alternating bites from each. "And he gave me this ring. A claddagh ring... Crown, heart, hands... You know?"

I nod. "Loyalty, love, friendship." My lips crook upwards. "That's really romantic, honey."

"It was beautiful. Silver." Buffy smiles in reminiscent wonder. "I was so happy, he was so happy." She pouts. "Then I had to go to school." Her final mouthful is munchily macerated. Finding the cupboard bare, she slams it closed. "Wills, you're up."

Willow's confused. "Huh? You want me to..? I wasn't actually there, Buff."

"That's not what I remember, kitten" Buffy says archly. "And if I remember, you remember. Continue with the 'splainy, Luxemburg."

I clasp Will's hand and my fingers hug it gently. Our Miss Summers truly doesn't want to tell this story, the next part of it, anyways. But she is trying to do so, as opposed to just being trying. "Willow, sweetie, I think I know what Buffy's about. Humour her." There's a poutily indignant scowl from Buff, her version of vampire game face. She must have been an utterly adorable three-year old. I retaliate with a serene smile. Take that, Buffy!


	67. CHAPTER THIRTY ALPHA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTY ALPHA: BUFFY**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

And then I woke up, and it was all a dream, the status quo restored. All was well in the land of Egypt, home of denial. My encounter with Aluwyn was pushed down into my subconscious, an even deeper, darker, more sunless pit than the hole in my ass, to be forgotten forever. Yeah, right! As if! What actually happened was that I woke up, heard Will and Tare murmuring to each other, my ears suddenly a-prick at the words "curse" and "Angel".

"No." I said, making them both jump like coked-up kangaroos on red-hot coals. My girls seemed almost guilty. A touchy subject, Angel. "I didn't, though everyone thinks I did. I've never denied it." I felt a jagged needle of cold rage thread its way along my veins into my heart. "Until now". I hadn't dared deny it back then, those nearly three years ago. Fucking Xander! He had made me feel so ashamed.

I needed to play a sudden, little game of anywhere-but-there-in-that-memory. My directed glance caught Tara's eye. "Is, is the moon setting?"

Tare did that quizzical thing with her eyebrow, went to the window, and then the full moon, the Blood Moon, shone in. She began a soft chant and my hopes were dashed, disabused by the undeniable evidence presented by her invocation. Not a dream then. Aluwyn had been real.

As Tara finished incanting, Willow noticed me gazing intensely at her. "Thought I saw a touch of redeye there, Will. Didn't think moonlight could do that." I was remembering what the Saga Vasuki had shown me: the womb-bloody radiance of The Seed reflected in Wills' eyes as she had made the same incantation deep within the guts of the earth, beneath the crater that had been Sunnydale in the original reality, before Aluwyn had begun her meddling.


	68. CHAPTER THIRTY BRAVO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTY BRAVO: BUFFY**

**:****_Saturday, 14th October 2000_:**

Tara was eyeing me thoughtfully. She'd always had that guarded watchfulness, that insightful caution. Hemery High had been, and likely still was, a school of sharks and barracudas. During my time there I'd seen that same, wary look haunt the faces of my prey. Having to chart the shoals and shallows of coterie, clique and claque, having to avoid the sharp, coral reefs of invective and humiliation, those treacherous seas soon etched that expression into the faces of the bullied. And, I was guessing, the abused. What were the thuggy torments inflicted by Tarebear's father and brother but bullying? I had been as abusive towards my victims as they had been towards her. Was that why I had been called to Slaying? Set a monster to catch a monster? Tara was still watching me. Distract! Distract!

"God, Tare, I only wanted to know if the fricking moon had set!" I joked in my best bogusly humourous tone. It seemed to fool her. Given my every night existence on the Hellmouth, I'd gotten to practice my quippy voice a lot.

"We used to get up, Momma and I, when the moon went down," One of Tara's wry, gentle smiles warmed her face, "So we could see the sun come up. We always used to incant that together."

Willow began speaking, Tara replied, and then they had one of THEIR moments, hazel-green eyes gazing into sea-blue ones gazing back. I basked in the mutual, sappy warmth of their love like a lone wolf in the long-ago sneaking a stolen spot by an Ice Age fire. Would they tame my Slayer savagery, make me their bitch-dog? I didn't see why not, I had the production of cute, huge puppy-dog eyes down to a fine art. Woof! Woof! Woof!


	69. CHAPTER THIRTY CHARLIE: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTY CHARLIE: BUFFY**

**:****_Saturday, 14th October 2000_:**

Willow and Tara started to traverse some seriously smoochy terrain. The sight of them was one of those sweet somethings that bring blessed balm to the soul. Like a cat snoozing in a pool of sunlight during a spring day, or the smell of newly made cookie dough before it's put in to bake. They were mine, they felt like mine. But they weren't REALLY mine 'cause I wasn't quite ready to be theirs. Why was this? What was holding me back?

Was it the fact that I'd agreed to Will's suggestion to go down the three-way with her and Tara? To find myself, less than thirty-six hours later, in bed with them? Was I freaked by this fluke? Because fluke it had been. Willow hadn't planned on my seduction, had not drawn up detailed charts with differently coloured pens. No, not freaked. I'd felt more truly safe in their cradling arms, warm and loved, than I'd had for a good, long while. This feeling of secure abiding never present, ever absent, from my trysts with Angel. I'd learned through Aluwyn that the Slayer had been born of mystical rape, gotten on a maiden enchained, by a monster unleashed by monstrous men. The Slayer essence couldn't help but be drawn to the wickedness of its fellow demons. I now thought that the human, Buffyish part of me had always been inwardly repulsed by Angel, that it had been the Slayer who'd craved his embraces, who'd demanded I act out the rituals of courtship and mating. Plus, despite myself, I had loved Angel. Then he'd betrayed us both and I'd been blamed, been shamed, been disdained. Who had lain with Angel, broken the curse? Who?

Anyways, Wills and Tare were away with the faeries, skipping along the rainbow bridge to lesbian Valhalla. They were likely to be gone for some time. Time I could use to process Aluwyn's twisty, snaking revelations.


	70. CHAPTER THIRTY DELTA: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTY DELTA: BUFFY**

**:Saturday, 14th October 2000:**

I remembered that it had all been done in a brisk and business-like fashion. To begin with, Aluwyn had conjured up a vial of essential oils. She had anointed me with the precious essences, her left thumb pressing firmly against first my brow, next my lips and last the suprasternal notch, that place between the base of the throat and the top of the breast bone. It's a sweet spot and a killing point, and depending on whether there are gentle fingers or lethal hands, a means of ecstasy or execution. At her whim Aluwyn could have dealt out delight or death, and I'd have been helpless to stop her. This had made me feel deliciously shiversome, terror and titillation twinned together. God, I'm a sick puppy!

Then Aluwyn had wound the end of her tail around her right forearm, constricting her flesh until fine veins were forced to the surface. She had transformed the vial into a hypodermic needle, punctured her pale skin, drew her own blood. I'd expected viridian ichor as vivid a colour as her serpentine hide, but it was viscous and amber-coloured like maple syrup. The hypo became a dropper and my head had been abruptly and unceremoniously pushed back as she dribbled droplets of her sap into my eyes and ears, nose and mouth. Finally, she had shaken the tip of her uncoiled tail, her rattle sounding a melodious mélange like a symphony of castanets and sleigh bells, xylophones and old bones.

Noise and light had burst into and onto and through my brain, a concussion of strobing disco mojo of such appalling intensity that pain couldn't contain it. It had been so beyond agony as sights and sounds from nine years of cancelled history, were crushed and compressed into the moment between one heartbeat and the next, and vomited into the guts of my memory.


	71. CHAPTER THIRTY ECHO: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTY ECHO: BUFFY**

**:**_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

What was it like, Aluwyn's harshly given knowledge? Selected scenes from the original timeline had been spliced and strung together into an episodic, somewhat gappy narrative. It was like watching a TV show or a reading a comic. Lotsa lacunae. It started with my Slayer dreams of the Master's Harvest, ended with a hero shot: in a Frisco back alley, a grimly determined Buffy in mid-pounce, stake held just so for precision dusting. Aluwyn had a gift for storytelling which real life does not. It all made dramatic sense. Mostly.

My ruminations were interrupted by Willow emerging from her little bit o' heaven. Speaking of ruminants, I could really have munched on one. Though not a horse of course, 'cause that was cruel! Me, hungry. I was presented with one of Will's smug, radiant neko grins. "Well now, how was your intro to the wonderful world of naked kissage and gay love?" Here was someone totally relishing a delicious snack of canaries in yummy shit sauce. She had every right to look like a cat high on a hit of catnip and cream. Had she skills or what, my sassy, lil kitty?

Willow's visage fell flat on its face, going from the sunny cheer of a Rio morning to a cold, wet night in Cleveland as I offered her a less than starry-eyed smile. I couldn't make out her words. My hearing felt kind of dull, like the room was lined with cotton wool, my sight a bit blurry at the edges, my muscles shivery and weak. Tired, I guess. My encounter with Snake Lady must have really taken it out of me. But what I could tell was that Will's tone was gentle and assuaging. I mumbled something inanely lame, my verdict on our earlier lovemaking reduced to but one word: wow! Just what that original reality Buffy had said to that pretty Asian Slayer. Satsu, wasn't it? Pathetic! Willow and Tara got back into bed, snuggling me tight. How beautiful they were, a kinda womb with a view. Mine.


	72. CHAPTER THIRTY FOXTROT: BUFFY

**CHAPTER THIRTY FOXTROT: BUFFY**

:_**Saturday, 14th October 2000**_**:**

Willow's curiosity is greedy and relentless. I was pretty sure she was well aware that I felt unhappy and wronged, that something rotted in the bowels of Buffy's brain. However much I might zig and zag around the issue, I knew she'd dig through the filth, muck and slime of my discarded memories, grope her way to where my dirty, little secrets lay treasured.

Eventually, after some, OK a lot of, verbal thumb wrestling in which I learned the how and why of Will's waiting a-bed for Tare and me, she huffed out a weary sigh. "Angel, of course." There was complicated sorrow in her voice. "It's always Angel. Tell us. Tara and I, we're both here for you."

Angel, of course. I remembered a near echo of that very phrase said to Willow by that talk-talkin' but not walk-walkin', spunkless spectre of Faith, Kennedy. "Tara, of course." She had muttered to Will. In the may-have-been future of that never-was, they'd been standing in a roomy, sunlit apartment, a downtown landscape showing through the humongous windows. Kennedy had troweled sympathy on to her face like cheap makeup but she couldn't hide the impatience and contempt that underlaid her tone, her callous disregard for Willow's grief or her cold disrespect for Tara's memory. Kennedy had worn a canary yellow tank-top with a radioactive hazard symbol in black, this conceited display making plain her toxicity. A pair of daisy dukes barely covering her ass, completing the wrapping up of her lewd lickerishness.

Whence came all this hatey-ness? Original Timeline Buffy had in truth barely known Kennedy and I'd never met her. Thanks to Aluwyn's accident-on-purpose, was never going to meet her. Why my anger? Because of something OTL Buffy had once said to OTL Tara. An unthinkingly blurted out something that seemed to me, to have made that other Buffy into a pot as black as Kennedy's kettle.


End file.
